Apple Codec with Widex

@user715 said:

Is this typical? Does anyone know what codec the iPhones are using with the MFi?

Apple doesn’t disclose what codec they are using… I think AAC with LC3 ideas borrowed from LE Audio specs

I have Widex Moment 330 RIC hearing aids (HA). The Moment app on the iPhone has 2 sets of streaming settings - Speech and Music.
I found I could not manually select which set to use when I was streaming audio from my iPhone to my HAs - instead the Moment app autoselected the set for me. At times it used the Speech set when I listened to music.
Next time you are streaming, check in the Moment app to see which set of streaming settings have been selected. If it is Speech then a lot of high frequencies are being cut off.
In my own experience of streaming music, where the app correctly selected the Music set, I personally found the sound not as good as when I reverted to using my Bose QC25 headphones (with my HAs removed).
Other people report different / better experiences than mine, so IMO this points to individual Widex HA configuration being key to the listening experience.

Callout to Widex: please update the Moment app so a user can manually select which set (Speech or Music) of streaming settings are used when streaming audio to the HAs.

I have an iPhone 11 Pro and Widex Moment 440s. Like the OP, I find the streaming audio far from high fidelity. Before HAs, I used Etymotic ER4s earbuds to stream audio and both music and speech sounded just great. Not the case with the 440s. I am new to HAs, having worn them for maybe 2 months, so please take what I say with that in mind. I read somewhere that BT streaming from the iPhone to Moments use some sort of “low energy” method, probably to save battery life. The audiologist mentioned that BT is a battery hog.

As for not being able to switch between Streaming Speech and Streaming Music, I can switch between the two, although the two modes don’t sound all that different from each other.

Ed

I’ve only tried BT streaming from the iphone, but I was all over the settings in the phone but didn’t find anything that helped. My best guess was a low spec codec.

Oh yeah, regular (non LE) BT is a battery hog for sure! With Paradise using a 13, a few hours of BT would use day of battery life. Bluetooth LE is still capable of CD quality.

The sound quality streaming from the iPhone was like listening to the music playing in the next room with ear pressed against the wall. Like a very low bandwidth codec or heavy handed roll-off. Is that the effect your getting, similar, worse, better?

I’ll be checking in with my audi Friday. I at least need more control from the app!

D-OH! That should have been AAC. Sorry.

Pretty much the same sound as my experience. This could be many different things, a couple easy guesses are, it’s just one of the LE’s lower bandwidths being negotiated driving the codec to low-pass at lower frequencies, or the Moment’s feedback control attenuating streamed higher frequencies… so many options. The one I don’t want to contemplate is that it’s limited to drive ComDex sales for quality audio streaming.

FWIW - ASHA protocol/profile lists an 80’s telephonic codec that’s good to 8KHz. I was expecting that may Apple was using something like that too.

I wouldn’t go as far as call them horrible, I trialed Phonaks (Paradise, for the BiCROS) for two weeks and I amazed at what they could do for comprehension in extremely challenging environments. I’d regard Phonak as the leader in functional assistance for hearing, and that they achieve it in ~5ms is astonishing. If I had much more hearing loss, they’d probably be my choice. In the music program or not, they were much better for music than I’d anticipated and very usable for that. But for me, the clarity of the Moments with minimal lag suits my needs and choices.

I had phonak for a few months, And they suck for music, lmao

I doubt Widex give this info because it is NDA info

Using the Widex Moments with an iphone 12 right now - while still not perfect, the streaming music quality is a huge improvement over my previous iphone 8. I haven’t used an 11; maybe the quality is getting better with sucessive models?

RE: BT - Widex only uses Bluetooth Low Energy

Good to know! I was using an iPhone 13. According to Apple any iPhone since the 8 and with the OS 7 or later are listed as supporting MFi hearing aids.

LE has new codecs to make sure the audio quality isn’t compromised despite the low power and low datarates. Widex works with the Bluetooth governing body as they develop these new standards.

I discussed this with my audi today and the response was “Hmm. No, that’s not right.” We’ll be testing with a new set of HAs in a couple of weeks, and they’re reaching out to Widex support. I’ll share what I know when I know it.

@user715 said:

Finally coming to the end of my trials and I’m definitely a Widex covert. I really liked the BT with Phonaks, and as I was testing the Windex BT with an iPhone the sound quality was pretty awful, dull and muffled, well below the receiver capabilities.

Looks as though your “predictive” spell checker was having some fun with you. I doubt your HAs were immersed in “Windex,” but of course if that were true, it certainly could affect the sound quality. Then again, if you were a Widex secret agent (again, the spell checker calls you a Widex “covert”), could we trust the observation, or could it be a 1970s Mad Magazine “spy vs. spy” ruse?

Ducking,
Jim Robertson