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Comparing Widex SmartRic to Philips 9040

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Yes but when I suggest that to my audi, customs with the right venting, he said they would be uncomfortable and I would hate the sound of my own voice even more, lol. He also said soft customs would not work for me and they had to be the hard acrylic. My neighbor has those and said at times they hurt him. But I agree that it all starts with the right domes or customs.

Edited

My audiologist discouraged me as much as she could from getting custom molds until I found someone else to make a pair for me lol. The hardest part is determining the right ventilation, but the software helps with that – at least Oticon Genie 2 does. Custom molds give you way more leeway to disable/curtail feedback management and improves a bit sound quality for music. If it were up to her, I’d still be wearing domes!

In reply to @e1405

I’m not really getting any feedback (just some with Puresound at times when I try it) and getting enough venting in customs might be hard to do for my particular loss (according to my audi) to avoid that occlusal effect with my good hearing at 500 hz. I already find my voice disconcerting and loud which is my 2nd complaint that bothers me after poor performance in noise. Audi say the tulips are not considered vented but at least they stay in, lol.

I don’t give a crap at this point about speech in noise and very rarely in those situations anyway. It’s what the do to make noise into something else like road noise, air cleaner fan noise, wind, traffic, etc. And kitchen noise is yet another area that is torture, lol. Plates, utensils, pots banging away are just agony and have to either turn the HA to 1 or leave the room. No HA is perfect since they don’t use ANC but the Philips helped a lot more with the noise program. There are many levels to the noise control in Philips setup software and only on or off in the Widex software.

In reply to @jazzpete

Yes for live music playing they can’t be beat. I’m sure that’s not true at 85+ jams or concerts where ear protection is required but that’s true of all hearing aids.

@fbacher1: I was thinking that maybe the reason I am fine with my Oticon hearing aids for music is my type of hearing loss. I have otosclerosis and have undergone a stapedectomy only on my right ear, which led to some sensorineural loss as well. The point is, my ears sound different, although with the Oticon Intents, the gap has shrunk. I still hear a difference in music, though speech comprehension is nearly identical in both ears with the Intents.

Let me use an analogy: my left ear sounds like an acoustic guitar, while my right ear sounds like the sound coming from a mediocre pickup. When I blend them in my brain, my guitars resonate quite nicely. If I were to go ‘mono,’ I’d be fine listening to my left ear (natural) but wouldn’t be happy at all with only my right one (clearly processed). My loss in my right ear looks like yours, so perhaps that is what is going on with you and the Phillips.

You can see my left ear has some low freq loss relative to the right. I hear this as distortion sometimes. For a while I thought my crystal clean Blues Cube guitar amp was distorting at low settings and I did all sorts of amp searches for the solution, lol. It was me all along. My noise issues are worse in the left ear too and I think it’s that some additional hairs in the ear hearing apparatus are damaged where they are not in the right ear.

The solution for me is to not force as much gain into the left ear. I also noticed that the Widex fit lowers mid-freq by 8-9 around 2500 and 3200 hz only in the right ear and I think this is due to test they do for loud noise tolerance which is pretty subjective. Maybe if I lower the left like that also it might control this noise issue?

I’m going to investigate this a bit today. I still have good hearing up to 1K and yet there is gain being applied in the Widex which doesn’t seem logical either. But for now I typically set the left ear 1-2 volume setting lower than the right and the extra distortion is not there! I think I can remember the day about 20 years ago when I did this damage hammering on a fence board (taking a wood gate appart) with no hearing protection. It was very loud and hurt and dummy here didn’t go for the noise protection headset…which I always do now.

My left ear (mostly conductive loss) handles excess loudness relatively well. When music is loud, I simply adjust the left hearing aid down a bit. However, my right ear responds differently due to a piece of gold substituting a small bone and an important sensorineural loss in the high frequencies. Consequently, my right ear doesn’t handle loudness well at all. Excess volume is perceived as saturation (if it’s relatively loud) or painful distortion (if it’s reeeeally loud). While saturation can make a cool sound, I don’t want it enhancing the sonic characteristics of my guitars!

On my quest for the “perfect” music program, I’ve learned a lot about my ears and how to achieve a “flat-sounding” program. Relying on external references and lots of trial and error, I’ve developed a pretty good program. Live music, my guitars, and my headphone all sound great with my music program, and I feel I’ve tackled much of the learning curve. This gives me confidence that I can make any hearing aids sound great for music in the future.

Edited

Cool. I think I found a very good audi but she is 2 hrs north of me in LA. She thinks my audi doesn’t know what he doing based on my comments, and settings. I might just try her out soon. Hearing Aids — Musicians Hearing Solutions7

Just got a quote of $500. for a pair of earmolds which she says I should be using. Does that sound about right or a bit high? I’m getting some for Philips 9030’s to give them a try (micromold or microshell) for $80. for the pair. Also the $400. charge for set up and 90 days of tweaking, some remotely, doesn’t sound too bad if she is as good as her reputation says about her.

from the link above about Widex:

“The Moment is the first hearing aid which offers no delay in processing the sound signal. That’s really a game-changer in the sound of hearing aids, no doubt. This essentially means the natural delivery to the eardrum of processed sound, which will enable a very seamless sound experience for users.”

Sorry, but if processing is involved, there will be delay in delivering the sound signal. Look, I have high hopes for Widex for myself, and the company has a stellar rep among many musicians! but there’s no such thing as “the NATURAL delivery of PROCESSED sound.” that’s impossible. And it borders on jingoism. We hearing aid users need to accept that we’re hearing processed sound with any brand of .

p.s. i suppose widex could say that EVERY HA provides a “natural” delivery of processed sound, in that the middle and inner ear is receiving this processed sound as it would the sounds we hear without aids. Fine. Take your HAs out. Now you’re getting unprocessed sound. Put them back in. Better? Of course. But that’s a result of processed sound. Even with Widex.

Yes marketing in general and especially for hearing aids, gets way out of control in order to differential themselves, but they end up all sounding the same don’t they, lol. But I’ve found that even in the universal program the Widex “sound” for music is different in a very good way. The Puresound mode, which is where the delays are 0.5 sec is only useful for some people with very open domes and moderate hearing losses. Marketing doesn’t reveal that of course. Puresound has its own set of noise and feedback controls which are pretty mild and has to be to lower those delays. For some users, Puresound is better than the Universal mode which is lower delays but not 0.5 sec. I found Puresound to be “different”, more prone to feedback and if I lower the volumes useable for me and a bit more clear listening to the TV to the point where I can almost use it day to day.

But I also found music to be better with the Universal program and not the music or Puresound programs. Maybe with some tuning that could be different for me but out of box, Universal, again with some volume reductions (still fighting that a bit) really yields sweet, clear tones without distortion from my guitar, electric or acoustic. I could not get my 9040 Philips to even approach this level with many hours of tweaking, different approaches, rationales or even duplicating levels, and other settings from the Widex. So far for me, Widex is a mixed bag, but part of that is my particular audi not willing to listen to me when I say it’s too loud for my ear and the Widex “seems” to create worse noise from tolerable noise in some situations like freeway tire-to-road noise, lol.

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