Lifelong musician/audio engineer dives into trials of HAs...here's my story and experiences thus far

Hearing Aid Self-Fitting and Adjusting [DIY]
#13

I wonder whether you could get rid of this or whether it’s unavoidable. Off the top of my head, feedback issues (does it go away with a more occluding fit), mic/speaker limits (is it there with a more powerful receiver, or if you turn down the music but turn up the hearing aid volume), cochlear distortion issues at regions of severe loss (is it there through a quality headset if the volume at that frequency is loud enough).

That was my experience with the PureSound program, too–it seemed like it SHOULD be good for music, but in practice it sounded weird.

#14

As a point of reference, I wear high-quality ear monitors for performing. Things sound glorious with them. The entire audible spectrum sounds absolutely amazing. I wish I could wear them permanently, but the mixing console, processing and power supply to run it all won’t fit behind my ear! In all seriousness, I know that my hearing is capable of hearing the quality that I seek from my experience with my ear monitors. With that rig, I have very specific eq and dynamics processing tuned to my preference and the payoff is crazy good quality.

There’s something going on in the Widex aids particularly that badly distorts the high-frequency content. I think it’s digital aliasing, as it sounds familiar to me from my days doing pro-audio design. Another interesting datapoint is that the ReSound Omnias don’t exhibit this same high-frequency aliasing. In fact, I think they sound more “hi-fi” than the Widex Moment, but their latency is much worse, totally ruining the experience. It’s so bad, I cannot seem to get over it. I find myself getting really frustrated with them and going back to the Widex every time I try them even though the fidelity isn’t as pleasing to my ears. The Widex processing is just faster, thus reducing latency, comb-filtering and timing cues for localization. Frustrating. I wish manufacturers would raise the sample rate to allow for less latency. I believe they are using a 24kHz sample rate which limits HF response to 12kHz and doesn’t allow for very fast processing times. If they’d double the SR to 48kHz, they’d cut the latency in half and double the frequency response to 24kHz. That would allow all of the audible spectrum on the top end to be amplified without the negative aliasing that I hear from the Widex Moment and the negative latency issues I hear with the ReSound Omnia. The downside is that doubling sample rate would increase both the power consumption and heat generated. These are obviously big design challenges that would require a LOT of time and work to resolve.

I have more observations, ideas and wishes for microphones, but that’ll have to wait for another post.

Thanks!
Chris

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#15

I think historically most of them were at 20kHz, but they’ve been pulling up their socks recently. Widex Moment claims 32kHz. Oticon, Phonak and Signia are all claiming 500 million instructions per second now, which should support this.

#16

Suggestion: How to change your username (and name) because I can’t remember usernnn numbers and also, I can’t find my socks. :rofl:

btw> after 30 days you can no longer change your username.

#17

Would changing the Rationale in Widex Compass help with this?

#18

I really don’t know what changing the fitting rationale does. Maybe Neville or someone else could speak to this. It’s worth a try.

#19

User name changed. I’m now Heater. :wink:

1 Like
#20

If Widex or anyone else is using 32kHz or higher sample rates, I don’t know why they wouldn’t extend the audio frequency response to the technical limits. At 32kHz, that would be audio up to 16kHz which would sound a hell of a lot better than rolling off at 8.5kHz or so currently. Perhaps their algorithms have too much high-frequency aliasing to be acceptable if they don’t limit the response, thus frequency-masking the aliasing. That theory would support the aliasing that I hear at the lower frequencies below 10kHz. Additionally, the latency issues will only improve with higher sample rates.

So very much of music and the world lives north of 10kHz. I wish Widex (or anyone else) would address those of us who can still hear and appreciate those frequencies as wearing the HAs (even with the most open domes) severely attenuates all frequencies above 10kHz. All of the frequencies above 10kHz are sacrificed when I wear my HAs. I’d love some clean response there.

#21

My background is neuro not physics. I’ve assumed that at this point the upper limit on bandwidth was related the the physical speaker. Hearing aids use balanced armature receivers and if you look at the spec-sheets as you increase the power (and size) of the receiver you lose high-frequency bandwidth. I can’t imagine that limit is artificial.

I believe that hardware advances are tremendously more expensive than software advances. I have no idea to what degree the hearing aid industry is chasing that upper bandwidth. There have certainly been improvements in feedback management lately, which may be the first step when chasing stable high frequency gain. On the other hand, a huge proportion of users may not have useable hearing above 10 kHz.

As for changing fitting rationales–it just changes the gain, so you can do the same manually with the levers. NL2 and DSL are the two most common independent fitting rationales and have slightly different ideologies about managing loudness versus audibility (in DSL high and low frequency gain tends to be higher and compression lower). The widex proprietary rationale will basically be NL2 with some tweaks, usually reduction in gain to support first user acceptance given X years of auditory deprivation impacting their tolerance for the frequencies they’ve been missing. I’ve heard of some musician audiologists who still like CamFit, but I don’t think that’s offered in the Widex (or any) software at this point nor is any research centre still working to improve it, so it’s rather a ‘historical’ rationale at this point.

2 Likes
#22

Have you considered the Ear Lens. :smiley:

#23

For reference a picture of balanced armature technology;

1033×223 48.1 KB

#24

Never heard of this technology, so interesting. I went and saw Dr Cliff review. The price and the complexity are hard to ignore from a novice like me.

#25

I have considered Ear Lens. I had an interview with them to see if I’d be a candidate and I am. My biggest concern with Ear Lens is the impact that the lens has on my hearing when I’m not using the aid (wearing ear monitors). The representative told me that it attenuates the high-frequencies.

1 Like
#26

Balanced armatures have really come a long way in recent years. Most musicians’ ear monitors use balanced armature drivers. Because my ear monitors sound so damn good, I know that the limiting factor is not the BAs. That said, my ear monitors have 5 BAs inside with a passive crossover splitting up specific frequency ranges between them. Perhaps this would be a direction that HA manufacturers could borrow from the pro audio world. Of course, that requires custom molds with occlusion, but that’s a price I’d gladly pay.

#27

My experience in pro audio design and manufacturing is that software development costs far more than hardware. These days, so much of the hardware is already designed into the chip, there’s very little discrete circuit design needed. The bulk of the work is now in the software design and development.

#28

After quite exhaustive testing and many full days of wearing each, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Widex Moment Sheer 440 is my preference over the ReSound Omnia 9 M&RE. Please keep in mind, these are my thoughts and experiences only. Yours will surely be different based upon your hearing, preferences and priorities.

There are many really great aspects of the Omnia 9, but in the end, I just couldn’t tolerate the latency that it added as compared to the Widex. I was able to minimize the latency by using more closed domes, but then the natural acoustic sound was blocked from my ears and the lower frequencies suffered. I feel that the Omnias have a more musical timbre vs. the Moments and are easier to listen to generally but the latency completely negates that benefit for me. Also, the M&RE is pretty useless for me. I had hoped that the M&RE would be particularly beneficial and spent lots of time working with it. While mics in the ears would be ideal, the iron-fisted processing needed to prevent feedback due to the extremely close proximity to the speaker makes the M&RE sound bad.

The ReSound iPhone and Apple Watch integration is superb! Please, Widex (and every other manufacturer) take note! There is FAR more control available via my phone and watch when I’m out and about. That gives me more “levers to pull” to get things to sound as good as possible in each situation.

The Moments have significantly less processing latency. This provides real, tangible benefits to those of us who may not have severe hearing loss because it allows the amplified sound to mix with the acoustic sounds in our ear canal in a more time-aligned way than HAs with slower processing. That said, there’s still audible latency and it’s definitely audible and undesirable. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I hope Widex continues to work on raising the operating sample rate to make processing faster and refining their algorithms to make them more transparent in the high frequency domain. Also, I beg the industry to extend usable frequency response to the maximum that their sample rate will allow (Nyquist Frequency - 1/2 of sample rate frequency). Much of the world’s sounds and detail live above 10kHz and even though my hearing is largely intact there, the domes block a lot of it. As I age, I will only need more support up there. I understand many of the technical challenges involved though and will greatly appreciate the engineering that makes it possible.

If it’s useful to anyone, I can put together a list of my “pros and cons” of the Widex and Resound HAs. Both have their pros and cons, without a doubt and for certain your experience will differ from mine.

I would like to try another “premium” hearing aid and fit it myself to compare against the Moment. Do you folks have any suggestions?

Thanks!
Chris

1 Like
#29

OK, I’ll bite:
Read this, and determine if it meets with your critreria.
Oticon has stepped up their game for musicians & audiophiles in the last few years, using High dB input headroom, and very high sample rates with 24 channels of frequency fitting adjustments.
I’ve been wearing the Oticon More 1 Rechargeable HA for over a year, and with a lot of tweaking found the MyMusic program to be very rich & clear with good dynamics.

Your desire to coax the industry to increase the frequency response will no doubt fall on “deaf” ears, as the main focus of HA’s is to improve speech.
The fact they allow us to enjoy up to 10khz is a bonus.
Probably 95% of HOH users would not benefit with an increased response due to age related loss above 8khz.
You are indeed very fortunate to still have audible acuity above 10Khz.

Another factor to consider is the power needed to drive the BA’s to reproduce 20-20khz.
Batteries the size of Over Ear headphones would be required for a 12 hour day of use.
Your example of studio quality IEM’s does not take into account the fact they are wired, not portable battery operated devices.
The typical bluetooth ear buds only run approx. 4 hrs on a charge.

Anyways, try the Oticons, and see watcha tink!

1 Like
#30

Heater - thank YOU for this thread. I am a composer/producer and mixer, and musician, and I found this thread and your research with gratitude. I wish I could pick your brain about self programming, and I’d be happy to pay you for a consult. I had SSNHL in my R ear three months ago, (and existing hearing loss in my L), and have been trying to figure out a solution to staying in the game. all told, I have mild to moderate HL. Like you, I am trialing widex sheer, and have an audiologist that doesn’t get my needs, and may not even know how to tweak under the hood. I’ve been researching music expert audiologists and have discovered a few - Marshall Chasin, Julie Glick, and a few others, and might go see one of them, BUT I also see me needed to take the levels at some point. How might we connect? I just joined here so I’ll see if I can send you a PM. Thanks for making me feel hopeful.

#31

Hi SOL - what product/software did you use to create an inverse EQ curve? THanks

#32

which manufacturer are you referring to here please?