Hi;
I would like to get the most out of my Widex Moment 440 RIC HA’s for music by going to an external equalizer and right now I am looking at the Schiit Lokius 6 band equalizer and was wondering if anyone here is using this or some other external equalizer with good success,for music only.
I realize that the phone app would control the HA,but the Schiit would control the ‘main’ stereo set-up.This is the Lokius:Schiit Audio: Audio Products Made in USA
I would suggest, before you do that, get a noalink wirless and download the software and you can set up your music program the way you would like to hear it.
I am now sitting on my patio listening to the Amsterdam orchestra live from Berlin over the internet to my smart TV connected to a Roger Select iN to my Phonak P90’s set the way I like to listen to music … and it is wonderful.
Technology is GREAT!..
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Thanks,but I am not listening over the internet,I need it to go between my DAC and pre-amp on my main listening room stereo.Huck
I would leave the source untouched by any manipulation. The old “as the artist intended”. There will of course be some colouring of the sound by the different components it passes through including the speakers but I would leave everything flat.
I agree with mhclavey to adjust the hearing aids to your preferences. Apart from amplifying, that’s what hearing aids do…equalization.
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Thanks,I just thought maybe the outboard equalizer would help to be a finer adjustment to the basic three band EQ on the phone app.Huck
Thus his suggestion to do your own adjustments.
The world sounds like it does. Our ears are the ones betraying us. So the aids are there to aid in letting us hear the world as it is.
Before I got aids sure yes I was looking at ways to make it sound better for my ears. Even as a teen I was always bumping the treble a little to bring out cymbals and such. But my ears always won. Or the sound being shared with others would not sound right for them. For them, it would be all high and tinny.
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Sorry,complete newbie on the hearing aid thing,but to do my “own adjustments”,maybe I can’t get there with just the basic 3 band on the app,I just though the 6 band equalizer would get a little closer to a more refined sound.Thanks,Huck
I might have the wrong brand but wasn’t there something about the aids “learning” your preferred listening and then the fitter could make adjustments. If they’re always seeing the treble bumped up (with your audiogram, that’s my guess) then they could adjust the aids. Or something. But the self-fitting is where you could do your own very fine grained adjustments in what you hear. But yes it’s not for the faint of heart.
I think what mhclavey was suggesting was to learn how to use the hearing aids as the equalizer by self-programming using the Noahlink Wireless programming device along with the fitting software for your aids. That is, however, a big step for a novice.
I have no experience with Widex but if you look on the pro site you can find that your 440 hearing aids have 15 processing and “fine tuning” channels so they are effectively a 15 channel equalizer that is adjusted to match your loss. However, the simple app doesn’t have nearly the capability you want so you would use the fitting software your provider uses to program your aids to get access to the many more channels. So probably the first step is to have your provider set up a music program that better matches what you want to hear while listening to music rather than the default setup that is, hopefully, optimized to allow you to hear and understand voices in a variety of listening environments.
New to the forum, but as an avid audiophile/composer/ex-musician amongst other things maybe I can address a few things:
I agree this is probably the first good step to take. I am new to HAs and still going through a lot of trials, but in general but as far as I can see from fiddling around in fitting software, “music” programs on various hearing aids will tend to minimise or disable many of the features that are used for speech intelligibility (such as noise cancelling or emphasizing important bands of speech) so that is a good place to start to see if you can fine tune that or make a custom program with some features disabled that may interfere with fidelity or tonal balance in music. With fitting software you or your audiologist have the ability to fine tune multiple bands of your prescriptive targets at a few different SPL, so you can effectively make a profile that is completely tuned to your taste or some other goal in mind. Maybe in some situations where you might not be meeting prescriptive or desired targets, this is where the external equalisation could come in handy (be sure you are not exposing yourself to dangerous doses of SPL in doing so).
By default, anyone with anything more than a flat/mild hearing loss is not “hearing what the artist intended” regardless, and in fact any sort of equalisation whether it be through HA’s or otherwise in order to get closer to flat perceived frequency response is in fact closer to “what the artist intended” rather than leaving it alone or doing nothing, or the “untouched” sound as you describe. I had the same thoughts when I was less experienced with audio and even to some degree when learning about my HL and trying to cope with not enjoying music, but it is really the only logical conclusion when you look at it objectively.
Despite what many audiophiles and gear-lovers want to claim, frequency response, low distortion, and the preservation of time-domain characteristics from the interaction of the soundfield with your body/environment (the room) are simply the only real things that matter in terms of audio fidelity (one’s personal subjective preference in terms of a sound signature is something else entirely). In my experience with hearing loss, trying to maintain maximum fidelity (i.e. a flat FR alongst other things) is probably one of the most important things when it comes to our brain interpreting music as accurate or normal-sounding. So if I had to make any broad suggestion, which isn’t even exclusive to people with hearing loss, it would be to try an affordable calibrated microphone like the minidsp umik-1 and take in-room measurements, and learn to use software like REW to measure and assess your room to learn where to make corrections with parametric EQ in the first place. If for example your speakers in your room are emphasizing certain frequencies that is not easily correctable or already corrected by hearing aids, that could result in essentially a “double amplification” or “underamplification” that could cause further distortion or non-linearities that could affect your experience.
Onto the gear. If your source would be a computer, that is simply the easiest way to accurately and limitlessly apply EQ with software like EqualizerAPO/Peace in windows or the built in EQ in the Macos audio subsystem. If you don’t have a computer in the mix and you want a way to losslessly apply EQ in between your source and DAC, I’d say probably one of the best options would again be a product offering from Minidsp (similar price to the Schiit analogue EQ) where you can get a direct digital-to-digital interface so the signal integrity in maintained into your DAC without multiple conversions to and from digital/analogue losing further performance. It can be configured with software and you can achieve surgical levels of precision with EQing depending on your needs. If you are looking for a full solution you can fully interact with without some sort of computer or more advanced setup, I would look into the RME ADI-2 DAC ($1000) which is one of the best products in audio and can replace and almost certainly outperform and replace your current DAC and preamp entirely and give you a bunch of other features. It comes with a 5-band PEQ built in and you can have multiple profiles, and it is also a very competent headphone amplifier. If you need to input analogue sources for whatever reason, the RME ADI-2 PRO variant will also handle this but it is more expensive. A new version of both these products is also releasing soon which will have 10-band PEQ and some new features such as more inputs/outputs I believe.
I would say if you are willing to tune your room/buy better speakers/treat your room etc, it is prudent to do that first, but if you can’t then tune your HA first before external EQ as an option. I would skip the Schitt product since it is not very versatile as an eq and (personally) don’t care for the brand, and anything you can do on that can be better done on a computer, hearing aids, or any of the products with PEQ I suggested. There is also DAC versions of the Minidsp products that could replace your current DAC if you wanted to.
One thing I have noticed is most hearing aids don’t/cannot correct high frequencies, and high frequencies aren’t even really covered on typical audiograms anyway. External EQ could definitely be a way of restoring some of those details and dynamics to music if you were capable of hearing them with some minor to moderate amplification, because HA’s aren’t going to appreciably correct those anyway.
Just my 2 cents
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I see your 2 cents and give you another 2 cents, that was so good.
My comment about not changing the sound is only for hearing impairment. We can’t trust our ears anymore. Then also if others are listening. So adjust the aids to suit the audiogram and then to what you think you remember some music should sound like. Even though that’s limited in frequency response. Is there really anything of value above 10khz anyway? 
I grant that there could be some harmonics and “depth” but we don’t really hear it.
For us ski-slope loss hearing impaired folks, those high frequencies are the struggle. But I would say that the aids are able to deliver those frequencies to the ear…up to 10khz or thereabouts. They are, after all, very small speakers - like tweeters.
@GrayGhost Why not use the Phonak TV connector? isn’t the TV connector Digital Dolby Surround Sound?
I don’t have a TV connector … I think that is Bluetooth, and the Select iN is the FM Roger which is very good for voice, and lower power draw on the aids.
The TV connector may also be optimized for voice … I don’t know that, but the select does a very good job with voice … I enjoy TV much more now than I have for years.
I decided to get the Select iN to serve a double duty … TV and take it with to restaurants to put on the center of the table, for conversations.
@GrayGhost I don’t think the TV connector is bluetooth, but it is much much cheaper than the Select/On iN.
Also, the TV connector doesn’t have a battery, whereas Select/On do, which isn’t ideal, as they aren’t user replaceable to my knowledge.
But, it is good to know that the Select is good for TV too 
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@huck Besides the 15 channels, each ear can be different. You can for your right ear in the lows and your right ear in the highs.
WH
Thanks everyone! Huck
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Thanks,excellent! Huck