I doubt that that is an option here. ENTs seem to share the medical buildings with ha vendors but there doesn’t seem to be any connection. Afaik in Ontario we get $500 reimbursed by the gov per ear every 5 years. And we can claim the balance as a medical expense on our taxes. Aside from that, my ha will be out of pocket . . . so not an insignificant expense for a retiree without a private pension or insurance. I want to get it right the 1st time. However there are hundreds of ha vendors in Toronto and I am not in a rush.
I think you’re missing the boat if you don’t trial Widex, especially for music.
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Oh, I intend to. I want to trial both a Widex Moment and a Oticon Intent. Just as an aside, when I returned the Sphere the audi was out and a tech (an HIS) served me. She pitched it but when I raised a complaint about the upper mid nasties she admitted that when she tested it, she though it sounded “industrial” in that region. She did forget one in a glass of water for an hour so it passed the water resistance test . . . 
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I wondered about the adaptation period if testing different aids. That might affect your findings. I am currently trialling spheres against my NHS supplied nathos novas for music. So I’m not sure if I will get a fair comparison by switching between the two but not sure how else to compare.
When doing sonic comparisons for quality, choose 2 or 3 pieces of music that you know really well. Always compare at exactly the same volume because people tend to choose the louder one as the better one. And this is also true with a very slight mid/hi frequency bump, with many choosing the more forward sounding one as superior. While something with a mid lift will initially sound impressive, it can be fatiguing with extended use so choose carefully.
I agree with this. In addition, you should select pieces that are recorded really well. I highly recommend something like “The Ultimate Demonstration Disk” (The Chesky Guide to Critical Listening). The pieces are of a variety of genres (jazz, classical, blues (mostly acoustic instruments)), and each piece is accompanied by an explanation of what to listen for. Each piece focuses on a different sound characteristic (depth, atmosphere, transparency, bass response, focus, dynamics, etc.).
To Teewens concern about adaptation period on the aid – I don’t think this is necessary (or really relevant) for evaluating the quality of sound. It is important for things like comfort and effect of occlusion.
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Good advice. I did choose tracks that I know well but a few more than 2 or 3. Regarding volume I used the same source volume and had both aids set to the same volume in the Phonak app. I used the music program on both aids. Volume was louder with the spheres and with better tone and separation (bass \ vocals \ instrumental). By comparison the novas sounded flatter and more squashed although still pleasant to listen to. So is that worth £3k? Maybe.
What a superb exploration, throughout these replies! And how lucky many of you are to have direct tuneup access. Without that, the skill and the interest of an audiologist become crucial.
He or she may not be trained to fit for music, and in conversation might come to feel that they know less than you do about audio fidelity in general. So one has to proceed with tact!
For me (I am trained in recording and love classical music), years of squish, squash, flutter, and ‘holes’ were finally remedied by a wonderful new NHS audiologist. She was challenged by having just one, ghastly, species of aid that rang like a bell (poor transducers?), painfully overshot (compression mis-design?).
But she listened to me, and from some distant drawer retrieved a near obsolete pair of Phonak BTE M70. ‘We issue these to children’ she said.
Two half-hour clinical sessions, across two years, included my ‘singing’, loud and soft, hand-clapping to check comping, mouthorgan to check high end clogging, five minutes sent out into the street to assess full-range capability and omni-directionality. (Being rendered deaf to the rear in traffic had nearly obliterated me).
The first session was successful, and the second even more so when this great clinician took away the phasey multi-band comping and gave me simple peak-limiting.
Yes, there’s still slight digital ‘mud’ on choir or full orchestra, but these are older, basic devices. And, remarkably, they work down to 40Hz. I celebrate what I hear, words and music.
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A visual display helps by showing the audiologist the exact channels they should consider adjusting.
most audiologists don’t really have a good understanding of how to shape the sound of hearing aids in general, let alone for music, and so seeing the frequency domain information can give them better insights in terms of what is actually an effective adjustment, because at the end of the day no audiologist will truly know what its like to hear like their patient.