Musician, Widex, one year in

It’s been about a year and I recently found this forum. After going through cancer treatment a dozen years ago, I realized my hearing took a big hit and I started doing research on hearing aids. I heard an interview with Steve Lukather talking about Widex. Jumping ahead, I ended up getting Moment 440s.

I thought I’d share my experience - maybe it might help someone.

Widex advertises being the hearing aid for musicians. This is sort of true. Widex may be the best on the market but these are a long way from perfect.

I believe the technology in these hearing aids is amazing, especially the .05 ms latency, but the software and set up is lacking in a big way. I have had mine adjusted 7 times, the last 2 times in the past week and this is a year after first getting them!

Our ears are so amazing, there are no hearing aids that can equal what ears can do. That was a stunning thought.

In getting the hearing aids and setting them up, it was a very unnatural situation. The small room is no way to check a real world experience. One huge downfall is the HAs cannot be adjusted in real time.

When I first got them mostly set up, it was amazing hearing things I hadn’t heard in a long time, or I hadn’t heard the total sound - my guitar, piano, singing, etc.

It was an experience to get the hearing aids adjusted, come back in a week, do it again. Frustrating. There was no sound system like a portable stereo music player to check the adjustments at the appointment.

About 10 months in, I realized The sound I was hearing was not the actual sound of the source and there were some high end issues. It’s impossible to do any recording and mixing if you are not hearing the real sound of the instruments or voices. When I told my audiologist esses were extremely hyped and soft rain on my windshield sounded like stones, she apparently didn’t know what the frequencies were that needed adjusting.

I am very much into recording and software and one day it hit me I had the very thing to test frequencies. I set up my recording software with various music tracks, dialog, tv show voices etc., across a number of tracks, and then put an EQ on the master bus. This is how I was able to see 7k had a huge boost, and there was also an issue with 1k and 3k. Pulling 7k down 12dB with a Q of about 20, made the HAs sound more natural. Yes, 12 dB! Why there was such an extreme in that range I have no idea. I thought (wrongly) that I’d be able to take the specific frequencies and dB amounts and match them with the Widex software. Nope.

So I made an appointment to get another adjustment at 10 months. Unfortunately, here’s another place Widex drops the ball besides not being to adjust these in real time: The software for adjusting hearing aids doesn’t have a Q setting, and there is no 7k! There are huge gaps between adjustable frequencies instead of a constant line of infinite frequencies found in my own software.

My audiologist thought 12dB was extreme and suggested we try a 2dB drop. It was almost no difference. Finally we reached a point where we mutually decided to go to 6dB less on the 7k, which had to be adjusted by pulling down 8k!

Widex focuses on speech and it’s tricky to make it work and imprecise as well, but after going through this process, I finally have something that’s a little more comfortable.

In my opinion, a hearing center exam room, should have a decent full range sound system and Widex should have better software. (There were many more software issues as well, but this post is too long already.)

Hope this helps.
Good luck, and don’t give up!

Brent was brutally honest about BT streaming in that article . . .

Hello Bill K,
Sorry to hear about your hearing experience. You’re right -‘don’t give up’.
It is extraordinary that the long and intricate training of audiologists has had so little to say until very recently about music. The mantra is ‘speech in noise’ …and one outcome, I think, is that manufacturers have become clever with that one, but still not cottoned on to music and how much it means, emotionally and cognitively.

I’m a vintage hearing aid user, starting with the harsh and literally deafening state-provided instruments of 30 years ago. And… yes I love music, and am BBC studio trained. So I cringed at the missing bass, inappropriate pacing of volume compression, ‘pumping’, clogged high harmonics…

That was until one wonderful day two years ago when, working with a quite basic pair of obsolete Phonak M70s , a young health service audiologist questioned me in detail about what I could or could not hear. Long story short, she brought up the lows while we both talked, finessed overall volume compression (not multi band) while I whispered/shouted, then invited me to play my own keyboard while she adjusted high end roll-off to match my ears! Previously, the unheard high musical harmonics had been pushing overall level down, resulting in a jittering of level.

What moves me greatly, is that this lovely person told me her long training had not included music, it’s an optional extra. We were both thrilled by the results of her creativity. And it did not take unusual clinical time.

As for Widex - yes the company is inspired by the musical sensibility of Dr Marshall Chasin and it’s the brand I most often hear praised for fidelity. Probably forever beyond my budget, but I hope Widex will look into the issues you raise. Real time, detailed fine-tuning? Yes please! And good luck to you, too.

@birdcountry99 said:

Currently unhappily listening to flat music with my P90s.

Do you have the Manual Dedicated Music program enabled? Phonak’s autosense music program is NONsense!