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

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

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#22

Have you considered the Ear Lens. :smiley:

#23

For reference a picture of balanced armature technology;

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#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.

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#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

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#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!

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#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?

#33

Oticon. I use the More .
Here’s a link to there spec sheet.

I’m sure Widex and most of the other mfgs have close to, or the same bandwidth.

#34

I own one of their hardware units Products and I used one of the DSP EQs that comes with it, in another application I used FabFilter Pro-Q 3

#35

wait…oticon makes metric halo and fab filter? (I love the fab filter plugins)

#36

I’m seeing 9600, which is definitely kissing distance from 10k. is that what you’re referring to? Am I missing something? How do they feel working on music?

#37

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#38

Thanks PVC - I thought frequency response was the ticket…what’s fitting bandwidth? meaning it will in situ test up to 10k? That’s also impressive. widex (I believe) stops at 8k

#39

I’m no expert on comparing this Oticon spec against other manufacturer specs. But the (*) notation says
*Bandwidth accessible for gain adjustments during fitting

Which I am guessing; means that you can adjust your dog whistle frequencies.

ETA: I shouldn’t joke around. Dog Whistles are much higher than 10kHz. It means that you have gain handles at the 10kHz frequency that can be adjusted to provide more gain or less gain.

  1. Does anyone need these adjustments to high frequencies? I dunno.
  2. Does a typical hearing test measure these high frequencies for your Audiogram? I dunno. I don’t think so?
#40

My take is no. Why? 'cause if you could conceivably hear up to 10k you wouldn’t be here (Punny!)
Even if the gain can be set that high, it’d probably sound like distortion, or artifacts, or warble.

You’d be correct.
All the audiograms I’ve seen only measure up to 8k:

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