I am a musician who has used hearing aids for 26 years. I have come to realize that the ha industry is focused on speech recognition and music is not a primary concern. That’s reality and why most folks get hearings aids.
That being said I’ve had hearing aids manufactured by Ensoniq, Phonak, and now Widex. I am a woodwind player (clarinet, saxophone, flute) and have found that in order to play my instruments and not get severe distortion of the sound the feedback manager needs to be turned off. This was true of my Phonak hearing aids. The feedback manager was either on for all programs or off for all programs. I was forced to have the fb manager turned off because of music performance. I believe that wind instrumentalist pose a particular problem for audiologist because of the bone conduction from the teeth and proximity of the embouchure to the oral cavity.
When it was time for a new set (I’ve had 3 phonak sets over thew years) my audiologist suggested I give some various manufacturers a try. I recently demoed 3 different manufactures high end products. I first tried Starkey as they have spent some serious $$$s on research for music listening. The great part was that I could have the feedback manager turned off on only those programs I was going to use for music performance and teaching while the other programs still had the fb manager on. This allowed me to perform and teach without the trilling distortion. However, the sound of my instruments was a little “brassy and bright”. I could get used to it. I also noticed every speaker seemed to have developed a lisp. Maybe due to the emphasis on high frequencies. So while the speech hearing was good it seemed a little unnatural as did the timbre of my instruments.
The next set I demoed was the Oticon OPN hearing aids. Voice sound and word recognition were great but I couldn’t use them as the distortion when performing music couldn’t be eliminated.
My last trial was of the Widex Beyond 440. With these hearing aids I was able to leave on the feedback manager for all programs, even those I used for music performance and experienced no distortion. The sound quality of my instruments (to me) was like the “good old days” and very natural.
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The Starkey option was a good one but the Widex won out because of the sound quality of both the speech and especially music.
I still wish I had my ears of 30+ years ago but the Widex Beyond 440 are the next best thing for me.
I’d like to encourage musicians who need hearing aids to not be afraid to admit you need help. You need to be patient to find the right product for you.
I am extremely fortunate to have a wonderful audiologist who has infinite patience and is willing to spend how ever long it takes to fit and adjust my hearing aids.
