New Widex Moment 440....continuing problems

My husband is in the process of getting use to a new pair of Widex HAs. (moment 440). He has moderate to some severe hearing loss in the upper registers He has been seeing the HA specialist every two weeks for tweaking but he still has problems. He did have REM when he first got them and things looked good at the time. His first complaint was that he started hearing occasional beeping sounds, ringing when he spoke and when he heard people speaking certain consonants. He also complained that he was having problems with hearing men’s voices…they sounded muffled and he had to take his HAs out to hear them properly. Eventually they decided that many of his problems was due to feedback because his hearing aids were not fitting snugly into the canal and tended to wiggle out. The HA specialist did some adjusting to the program and changed his receiver Tips. He was told he may need ear molds. (apparently his ear canals are not similar and have a strange curve to them). He then realized that his eye glass temples may also be what was causing the beeping (hitting the HA and causing the receiver to move in the canal) He claims the beeping was gone when he didn’t wear the Eye glasses. He is currently looking for straight templed glasses or templeless glasses that don’t hit against the HA behind his ear. He has another visit with the HA specialist tomorrow. He’s not so sure he wants the molds and thinks the new glass frames will solve the problem of the beeping. I asked him besides the beeping, how is the speech? He told me there isn’t any more ringing but people sound like they are talking through a cylindrical tube. ???

I told him The Widex Moments are suppose to offer close to Natural sound…which he is not currently getting. THis is not his first pair of HAs. He had Oticon about 5 years ago and they just sat in the drawer because they would fall out while he was eating. The Audiologist he purchased them from was no help. Most of the Audiologist around here are sales people first and spend maybe 15 minutes with a fitting.

The HA Specialist we found was very attentive and spent loads of time but my husband doesn’t seem to be adjusting well to HAs. My question is…Does it sound plausible that all his current problems can be caused by ill fitting HAs? Thanks for any replies.

It’s always quite a consuming process getting used to hearing aids, and working through what is right for the individual. Fit is the base from which everything else should follow. A custom tip is made specifically for your husband’s ear and a custom fitting would usually provide the best acoustic performance. Sometimes an “off the peg” suit is fine (ie standard dome) sometimes a tailor made option is required. It’s very specific to the individual. With the hearing loss there should be lots of options available to your husband. Every time the fit is changed the fitting software needs to be run again. Widex use the sensogram, feedback calibration and hearing aid type to calculate the best start point. Otherwise the gain calculations are on the previous fit and this is a critical element to getting set up correctly. A complete custom aid (nothing over the back of the ear) would separate the glasses issue.

1 Like

I have Moment 330 with standard “receiver tips”. One of my ear canals is a strange shape while the other ear canal is normal. I stared with umbrella-shaped tips, then trialled tulip-shaped tips and ended up successfully with dome-shaped tips. The reason for changing tips was due to how comfortable they felt + the strange-shaped ear canal getting lots of feedback problems. The dome-shaped tips were comfortable and also no feedback problem with the strange-shaped ear canal side. This worked for me so I suggest your husband trial all the receiver tip shapes first.

2 Likes