Hi. I am totally blind, I have no eye sight and therefore, natural sounding hearing aids are really important to me. I was excited about the Widex smart RICs but they took away hthe push buttons which is a shame and honestly the platform seems quite old now. I’d venture to say that in many situations, modern HA’s like the Phonak infinios sound as good as their Universal program and the pure 0delay program has limited settings. For example you can’t seem to equalise the lower frequency bands. My hearing loss is in the low freqs so not great for me. I’ve contacted Widex who are amazing at tech support BTW, but all they’ll tell me is that the platform is old, implying that we’re due an upgrade soon. I would love for example a rechargeable version of the ITE HA as I hate tiny batteries. I have a 1 year old son and yeah… just not going there 
Does anyone have any info or theories on when the next products will be released?
I don’t know anything about any Widex updates. They are due for sure.
Blind, hearing loss and a 1 year old son. From reading a few of your posts you are very informed. Sharing your audiogram would be helpful.
Thanks
Hi. As silly as this sounds, I’m not sure which bit of the forum to click on to share the audiogram, but I’ll link to it below and hopefully you can read that.
despite what the audiogram says, what it doesn’t show is the horrible loud low droning very intrusive ringing in my ears, pressure sensations and fullness caused by the Hydrops. Also what I consider to be low freqs is not really what audiology covers. My reading software uses a lot of bass because the voices aren’t really natural sounding and so for me losing this much hearing on top of being blind is to say the least, a bit of a pain. Here try this link see if it works:
Does it really have to be Widex? I’ve been following them for a long time and they’ve become very slow in updating new hearing aids. Maybe you should try Oticon? They’ve made a big step forward and their hearing aids have large buttons and are easier to use. It’s possible that Widex is the most natural with sound, but with hearing aids, that’s a secondary issue because it’s more important to understand speech better. The brain plays the biggest role because it has to adapt to the new sound, learn to listen with the new sound. So don’t choose hearing aids too quickly, it takes a period of 2 weeks to recognize all the sounds in the background.
At the top of the page click your avatar.
Then select the person shaped icon.
Then select preferences.
There you will find the place to add your audiogram to your avatar for all to see.
HI. NO see here I really disagree with you. Speech is important yest, but tell me, when you have no eyesight and you’re in the city, do you care about hearing people talking, or do you care about the ssound of the cars that might run you over? my point is the entire hearing world is obsessed, utterly focused on speech. That’s fine, but we don’t all need sound in the same way. Widex does at least respect all sound. That’s their mantra. I’ve tried Oticon I hate the sound they make, they sound incredibly unnatural to me. Warbling and with a huge cone effect so I can’t properly position sound with them. I tried them for 30 days BTW to try and get used to them. Phonak sound the best after Widex IMHO, but they like to play about with compression a lot which also makes them dangerous to use as they raise and lower the volume when you don’t want that happening. It’s fine if youc can rely on sight, but when you change the sound that things make or turn them up or down, you are changing my entire perception of the world
I didn’t mean to offend you. I just suggested Oticon because I read about a lot of good experiences. Many people said that Oticon has a natural sound that compared to Phonak it has a more natural sound.
Oh you didn’t offend me at all, sorry if I gave that impression. You are right many people say they do sound natural. I’ve no idea why really, to me they sound very artificial. The point I make though and it’s not just to you, we need to stop thinking of hearing aids as only about speech. Ears do much more than translate speech for us
Just saw your audiogram and your relatively much 45 dB hearing loss from 250 to 750-1000 Hz and I am a bit surprised you got the open domes. The bass completely leaks to the outside of ear canal.
Regarding compression, your audiologist should inform you what prescription algorithm you have (NAL-NL2? maybe DSL 5.0? or proprietary Phonak Adaptive Digital?).
The audiologist has the possibility to make the program with reduced compression ratios or reduce them in AutoSense.
He has also the possibility to set Real Ear Sound (RES) directionality to make more front-back perception.
I think that you might need separate program for situational awareness:
- Based on Calm or Music program
- With fixed Real Ear Sound or Omnidirectional set microphones
- Compression ratios woul be manually tinkered down by Audi; however, keep in mind that compression of especially loud and sudden sounds may be protective against noise-induced hearing loss.
You have a features a reverse slope hearing loss, which is harder to treat, considering hearing aids are usually for “ordinary” ski slope with more hearing loss at the trebles.
Useful informations are on the Dr Cliff’s video on YouTube channel (8 minutes):
If you’re interested of more professional knowledge:
The reason for vented, not open domes that I’m using, was that we wanted to preserve as much of my hearing as possible. Whatever anyone says, you do not and will not get the same type of directionality with RICs as using your real ears. When I speak of directionality, I mean sensing something is in front or behind you. I know all the HA’s claim to do this but they really don’t. So we tried to keep my ears open to hear that. I do think though as I’m losing more and more hearing, closed domes are going to be the way to go, or, even better, ITE models like the Phonak I-R when it gets released hopefully in the summer.
Yes We have used the real ear sound as much as possible with phonak and my program is based on calm or music, music is my preference, but audi knows of no way to adjust the compression settings in that program, he sees no adjustments that he’s able to make within the music program to control this. The formulas you talk about like phonak digital etc, he’s never mentioned to me as to where they might be located. are those also available in the music program?
We have completely disabled autosense, I do not want it changing programs unless I do this myself. We removed the autosense program completely so now it starts on music by default.
Alright. It’s all individual, I don’t want to undermine your impressions, just to make sure your audi maxed out every option in RIC.
Keep in mind that Virto ITE (In the ear) model has also front and rear microphones, but embedded in the concha (part of auricle just before ear canal).
I am not sure, does Virto Completely In Canal and Invisible in Canal models have wireless connectivity like Bluetooth.
(EDIT: as @glucas mentioned below, CIC and IIC Infinio are without wireless, they are even indicated as “NWO” - non wireless omnidirectional)
Another option may be RIC Resound with an M&RIE receiver, in which a third microphone is inserted with the receiver in the ear canal. Thus, the receiver at one end faces the eardrum, but at the other end, there is a microphone facing outside the ear canal.
I am Phonakian, but I am a bit jealous of the omni feature of the third microphone embedded in the ear canal.
Maybe @jim_lewis would write a few words regarding hearing in omni program with that microphone, regarding the necessity of situational awareness for a completely blind person. There is also necessity to differentiate front-back and up-down sound sources.
I am not sure does Resound M&RIE receiver requires much visual informations regarding its maitenance and dexterity.
The drawback is that the last Resound lineup is Nexia, which is almost 1.5 years old and lacks the useful feature of Spheric Speech Clarity, an omnidirectional improvement for hearing speech in noise, which would be useful for blind person.
No. Bluetooth only comes with the HS (Half Shell) P-312 model. In the CIC and IIC models it is not available. IIRC it is available in the Starkey CIC (Evolv) and it may be available in one or two other different CIC models, but not Phonak.
@glucas , IIRC, Evolv is relatively old platform lineup?
Sorry, yes, I was looking at old content.
The Starkey Edge CIC does a bluetooth version which is LE Audio enabled:
I wonder if those are rechargeable. I was waiting for the Phonak because the ITE not CIC is supposed to be rechargeable. I tried Starkey Genesis RICs and didn’t like all the sound processing going on, no matter how much we tried to turn off, it still did weird things like trying to expand soft sounds I.e. the ends of echos in small rooms even when we told it not to. All this damn processing
One thing I’ve not mentioned, the apps for these hearing aids need to be accessible. I mean to say, they need to be compatible with the iPhone accessibility screen reader called Voiceover. I don’t think I ever tried Starkey, but Oticon was an utter disaster. Signia didn’t seem to work that great but that might have changed. Phonak is by far the best, provided you’re not trying to listen to Voiceover streaming through the HA’s at the same time and Widex was also good.
Do you have experience of the latest Phonak Target software? I am wondering, could you write a set of instructions to tell my audi how to configure a program in Phonak to sound as analogue as possible and where to find all these compression settings some people say you can change and some not? I am wondering are they maybe only available in certain programs on the hearing aid? maybe in Music you can’t select them and that’s why he can’t find them?
Well do be careful with “telling your Audiologist” how to program and fit ones HAs, but they will know this as it’s quite basic to fit linear with DSL formula.
i feel the same but for different reasons. i am relatively asocial and spend far more of my time listening to music and watching movies. if i can get better natural sound from a pair of aids, i’ll be happier than with one providing state-of-the-art speech-in-noise tech. i am a costco member but have not used their services to date. that changes next month when i’ll drive 90 minutes to the closest one next month for an audiological exam. like you, i researched the widex for months, made a appointment with the closest audi distributor (also 90 minutes away). i got a full exam but the initial fitting was a disaster. they sounded much worse than my 2 yo otc jabra enhance select 200s. i was told that my loss was not compatible with widex and i should come back in a week to try something else. that’s when i began to seriously consider costco.
with that in mind, i am curious if the jabra pro 20 m&rie at costco might help with directional cues. the extra in-ear mic is supposed use the ear’s pinna to help localize sounds as long as your hearing loss is not too severe. if you have a costco nearby, it may be worth looking into. i understand that naturalness is often a function of latency and jabra/resound, while well short of widex’s 0.5ms, seems to be the next fastest at 5.0ms (6.0ms for philips, <15ms for rexton according to their specs).
anyhow, i had been tracking widex closely and was willing to pay extra fou their puresound but, after my last experience, i’ll see if i can get closer to musical nirvana with something at costco. good luck in your endeavor!
I’m not sure the audi’s I know how to do that. Again if anyone has a step by step guide with the latest Phonak software to make a very analogue type sound where loud noises don’t slam down the volume I’d be most grateful. I came across a post ages ago on the forum that described how to do it but my audi could not make sense of how that would apply in the Phonak software.