Musician, Widex, one year in

This should be a regular feature of AudioXpress or else a sister publication of some kind. Maybe HearingTracker can offer this writer some incentive.

@birdcountry99 said:

Thanks! I don’t think I have that enabled

No, you only have the Autosensce one, which is not optimized.
If you can, on your next appointment bring some music with you on your phone, and if you have over ear headphones, take them. Have your audi add the Music program, and give it a listen, and as them to tweak as needed.

Thank you so much! I will do that.

This is a topic which interests me greatly. I was never really satisfied with my old Widex Dream 220 RIC. However 4 years ago I was fitted with a pair of Phonak P90 RIC. The sound quality is immediately more natural. I can appreciate music much more, even when using its automatic program. Typically I listen to my audio system for at least 2 hours a day. I did go back a few times to the audiologist and I have tweaked them with DIY programming. At the end of the day I’m more or less back to the initial fitting which is really good.

I agree wholeheartedly that there is much to improve with streaming music although spoken word streaming is extremely good. I use Widex large tulip domes (semi vented) because they are the only ones which fit and stay in my oily ears. They also sound excellent.

I look forward to the day when hearing aids find the holy grail of intelligible speech in background noise. The advertising blurb on speech in noise is farcical.

I don’t like headphones. I much prefer to listen to my hifi speakers. The IEM may interest but I do get great music sound with my Phonak P90.

I know this is off the Widex subject but the Rexton Reach uses Connexx software that is live adjusted, you hear the results of changes in the fitting live. You can make adjustments using over the ear head phones or speakers with your aids in and hear the adjustments being made live. I have tuned the auto program for voices and the music program for music so it sounds correct to me.

Bill thanks for this detailed post. Very interesting for those of us music lovers who are totally let down by the poor music reproduction our standard hearing aids give us.

I listened to a Zoom talk recently by one of the partners of Hear Adviser, which is the owner of this listserv, Dr. Steve Taddei, via my local chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America. Very knowledgeable and unbiased, excellent educator. He’s in Chicago area.

Your post reminded me of a couple of interesting points made during that talk.

One, according to Dr. Taddei, was that there’s no substantial difference in the technology of the four or five dominant brands of hearing aids.

Secondly, a listener to the talk, a musician, said the music setting on her Widex was awful in reproducing music, and could not be made right. But, unlike you, she had a very rapid hearing loss and now wears a cochlear implant with a hearing aid. So it struck me that the hearing loss experience of the music lover may greatly influence how well any hearing aid works for them. The tech is more or less the same across the brands, but each user is unique.

Finally, in answer to a question from me, Dr.Taddei said it might be helpful to buy a supplemental device, such as an Apple AirPods 2 for listening to music, specifically, streamed music, I think. AirPods were recently approved by FDA for use as an OTC nonprescription hearing aid. They are under $200, I believe. Forbes has written a review of their capabilities. Haven’t read it yet.

Conventional hearing aids, even very high-priced ones, just don’t cut it for music.

Now I’m not sure about their utility in live concerts, or in music making. But it’s not such a steep cost that it might be worthwhile to trial them.

Glad to send you a transcript of the talk, if you like.

Nancy
Washington, DC

I’ve had my Widex SmartRic for almost a year now. I play guitar and they work pretty good for that, not perfect. One of my issues is that I use Puresound 99% of the time. And while it works better than the music program for live guitar playing, it will suddenly decide to increase noise reduction and lose all the treble. I don’t see any way to turn this off in the app. I did try to make a guitar program in the app based on Puresound but I think it still does it’s automatic AI thing whenever there’s too much of what it considers noise. It’s very annoying and I guess I need to ask my audi about this. I don’t see anything in the Compass program to address then, just setting for the speed of this autosensing change.

PureSound is pretty amazing even though I do get some feedback at times. I’m just at the point of having too much gain for PureSound but since it also makes my own voice so much less obtrusive to me, I don’t care if I have to be slightly undercorrected to use PureSound. My audi set me up as inexperienced so the gains are much lower. I just wish I could get music sorted out better. I’m using the dual vented sleeve domes which I like a lot too. If I find myself in a very noisy environment then I have to switch to Universal mode because the noise reduction is much more aggressive than with Puresound.

Oh I’ve also tried a custom music program with high frequency lowered a bit thru the app. I do have the Compass software but have not resorted to DIY with the Widex like I had to do with the Philips and the Costco techs. My current HearUSA tech is really very good and listens to my complaints and seem to know more tricks. I’ll have to ask her about this music issue and autoswitching.

Thank you. I am also a musician and I’m trying to figur eout what I’m going to get for my very first pair of HAs/ Your post was VERY helpful.

classical guitar player here. I wear signia 7x aids. My HA tech has programmed these on one dedicated musician program to essentially have a ‘pure sound’ in that feedback control and wind and several other features are turned off, and the balance of sound has been adjusted. I can’t recall all of the details right now. Chasin’s list below leaves off some adjustments, it seems to me. My point is, even with the Widex, programming adjustments will likely need to be made. I may be wrong here, but I think ‘pure sound’ is just having a lot of programs turned off. I wonder if one can’t achieve pure sound with almost any brand of hearing aid. I’m honestly not sure about this.

Dr. Chasin’s Checklist for Optimizing Your Hearing Aids for Music • Grand...6

For musicians with hearing loss, we offer this expert-verified checklist to take to your audiologist to create a better music program on your hearing aids.

@OcramSagev said:

PureSound is about reducing the processing delay with open/vented domes/sleeves which minimizes the comb effect, in particular for people with good low frequency hearing. It preserves sound timing, maintains frequency details and attemps to keep spatial awareness intact.

thanks for that info. I have no issues with comb effect, on any programs. I DID have issues with warble–comb effect–before I had a lot of programs turned off on musician program. Afterwards, there have been no issues.

I don’t understand why Widex would use “a seperate music program that does not use the Puresound algorithm.” I would think they would feature reducing the processing delay…???

anyway, I think eliminating features like compression and feedback elimination and wind reduction would enhance immediate processing speed. It certainly did with my Signia Ax 7s.

Again, Signia’s dedicated musician’s program was horrible. Unusable. Way too much warble. But that program retained a ‘lower’ feedback control and compression and wind….ooooof. NO. All of those features, that processing, has to be turned OFF.

p.s. all classical musicians with hearing loss will point out that they might hear the music played by others in a room without distortion; but when they play their own instruments, even solo, they will hear distortion. this is important.

There is also suggestion to consider 3DME In-Ear Monitor System for music:

Hearing Aids & Music Technology Archives • Grand Piano Passion™2

@jeffrey said:

I don’t understand why Widex would use “a seperate music program that does not use the Puresound algorithm

Among other things, if they did that, the music program would be limited to individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss.
I also dislike the Signia music program. I’ve tried adjusting it in various ways, but I haven’t been successful. My Phonak music program with my I30s sounds better.

Puresound was designed to improve user acclimatisation and acceptance of hearing aids amongst the most reluctant adopters: individuals with mild hearing loss. It wasn’t designed for music appreciation. Widex probably should create a music option given musicians tend to like their hearing aids, but it may mean adding a third separate processing path in the aids as the compression characteristics needed for music are very different to speech and the last I read puresound had its own independent processing path in order to get the processing latency as low as it is.