I’ve had my Widex SmartRic for almost 2 weeks. My primary reason for trying them is live guitar playing. I found that I just can’t get the Philips to sound natural enough (DIY) and I’ve tried the usual suggestions. My best Philips setting is using the Fit4speech rational and then copying the Universal program (to create a special music program) but remove all noise and feedback control and directionality. The Fit4speed rational produces a very comfortable result for normal use for me unlike the NAL2 which is just too loud and I really hate the sound of my voice with NAL2 (open bass domes with the Philips). My special music program is pretty good but some higher notes still sound distorted and tough to judge some high bends as to the pitch which is a major problem. The Widex SmartRIC on the other hand makes my guitar notes sound very sweet and normal, living up to the Widex rep. I’ve heard about (using tulip domes on the Widex).
The Widex was set up using the Widex rationale. On my drive home from the audi it was way too loud and very noisy on the cement freeway. I could not stand it all and all I heard after 50 mph was bacon frying. I believe I have some issues with damage to the my left ear that also seems to produce this type of bacon frying static at high HA gains making this worse. But I had to literally almost turn the volume down to nothing in the app to survive my ride home with the Widex. The noise was not as bad at speed on asphalt roads and so I think it’s related to tire noise. I found later that if I set the middle EQ gain down by 4-5 steps the noise was suppressed almost completely. The high and low EQ adjustments did nothing for this noise.
I looked at the Widex settings in Compass GPS later that first evening in frustration. I don’t remember making any changes but seems like I might have done something because when I put them back in they were much quieter and tolerable for me. My Audi says that if you make a change, it happens to the aids in real time regardless of if you actually save a change. Maybe I did make some change in poking around at the setting. I’m thinking I might have lowered the “Adaption” from 4 to 3 which is the only explanation I can come up with. On a return visit the audi made some minor changes adding programs and yet again on the way home I found the gains and noise way too high like everything was reset to the original settings!
I even pulled off the freeway and put the Philips 9040’s in and that bacon frying noise could not be heard with the Philips which are set at 100% of the targe. What a relief. So are the Widex HA very poor at handling this type of noise or maybe it’s just that the gains for the Widex ended up being too high? I can see they are 3-4 dB higher than the Philips at some frequencies. Or maybe the Philips 9040’s are just better with noise?
I’m very torn right now because I love the Widex for my guitar playing and just can’t get the Philips to match that performance and I doubt the new 9050’s will be any better at that one thing. But the Philips are way more comfortable for daily use and handle noise better. If anything I think I even hear slightly speech better with the Philips too. I don’t want to have to use two sets of hearing aids for different situations but it looks like I’m headed in that direction. I see the audi next week and and I’m going to try to explain this and get him to lower the gains. I can get to a comfortable level thru the app but I have to lower the volume down to 2-3 from a nominal 5. I don’t know what each step is in dB but in the Philips the default step size is 2.5 dB.
I’m not giving up yet because I have not heard my really guitar tone for many years and how you sound drastically affect how you play. But I’m pretty exhausted from trying to figure things out. I initially had Widex vented sleeve domes and they just would not stay in, even with the J hook and going to the largest size. The large Tulips seemed to solve that problem and I thought that was the initial reason they were so noisy and uncomfortable sounding but not so sure now.