Oticon vs Widex for critical music listening

Hearing Aids
#38

You have quite a bit of hearing loss all the way through including the low frequencies starting at 500 Hz. It’s natural for you to find the bass lacking in any program. It’s easy to ask your audi to “customize” the built-in Music program further in the Fine Tuning -> Gain Controls section to add more bass so that it’s at least on par with the P1 General default program. But keep in mind that the receivers are tiny little speakers which can produce mid to high frequencies amplification OK, but they lack the physical size to give you the kind of bass you want to hear just because of this limitation. It’s not just Oticon, but any other HA brand/model will have this same physical limitation.

It’s not clear how you’re being fitted (open or closed bass dome, and what size receiver). If with open domes and 85 dB receivers, you can try to up the receiver size to 100 or 105 dB and also go with close bass domes. With the bigger receivers, ALONG with making sure your audi manually boost the lows a bit more to your satisfaction, and the close bass domes to help keep the sound from leaking out of the vents like with an open dome, you may be able to get more satisfaction out of your hearing aids.

For most people with the normal low frequency hearing with the ski slope loss starting at mid to high frequency loss, the open domes with large open vents allows the low frequency sounds to come through for them to hear normally and the mid to high amplified more to compensate for the sound leak in the mid and high. But you have mostly low frequency loss as well, so the close bass domes should work better in minimizing the sound leak so you can hear more of the bass like you want.

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#39

The tiny receivers’ physical inability to “move air” is mostly overlooked in discussions about the “lack of bass” HA wearers often complain about.

There are workarounds - some would label them as kluges - but that’s not the reason why I posted this reiteration.

I just wanted to underscore the reality that no amount of tweaking of any maker’s fitting program can overcome a HA receiver’s inherent inability to “move air”.

My $0.02/FWIW

#40

Flalshb1024 - I’ve been looking at my account and profile page and see no place tp upload a pdf of my audiogram…

#41

@gregvoth and @deberh

https://forum.hearingtracker.com/c/forum-support/60

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#42

@gregvoth & @deberh : you won’t be uploading.pdfs, either. You’ll be plugging numbers … good luck.

#43

Thank you for your explanations. I will ask my audi to “customize” the Music Program as you suggested and after using it for a while, I will provide feedback.
Regarding domes, since I started wearing hearing aids, any size of vented dome would not keep the receivers in the canal - they would slip out - and I got custom made acrylic molds, each with one vent. Because of the shape of my ear canals, my Opn S1 were fitted 2 years ago with acrylic so called “Semi Open Skeleton” molds, each also with a vent. So, using vented domes that would allow for more bass sounds, as KeithL mentioned in his commented, unfortunately is not an option for me to experiment with.

#44

I was informed some time ago by the esteemed @Um_bongo that Hearing aid receivers are not in fact speakers, but balanced armatures, like those used in IEMs.
I just discovered that, indeed BA’s were 1st used in Hearing aids even b4 IEMs.
Here’s a great explaination from one of the top makers of IEMs, Ultimate Ears.
For your reading pleasure, brought to you by the flash!

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#45

@flashb1024: Thanks, flash, for that blinding insight (:joy:!!:rofl:!!:+1:t2:). I’m pretty sure that @Volusiano was using the term “speaker” as a simple equivalent of “balanced armature” to make a point.

And the point is that neither transducer - no matter its exact nomenclature - moves enough air to produce the auditory sensation of “rich bass”.

#46

Not in the realm of hearing aids because of the limits put on the devices for battery drain, etc.
The Balanced Armatures found in most high end IEMs, are in fact the same ones used in heaing aids.
That is a fact brought to my attention by the esteemed @Um_bongo. YES.
My little Spudster, you got the facts, jack!

#47

@flashb1024: And you got the spuds, bud!

[:rofl: spuds … bud :joy:!! :+1:t2:… 🥸]

But - don’t you have to have a tuned array of several of the little buggers to get that great IEM sound? (Why aren’t there HAs with multiple receivers, I wonder? Probably just because of power constraints.)

{BTW: your “R” character key needs oiling or something … just sayin’}

#48

My 1st pair of IEMs were Shure E2’s, which were a single driver.
They really had a rich sound for a $100.00 earphone.While the high end products feature triple drivers, you can get a good sounding pair w/single driver today for about $80.00 US, eh?
Your More 1 HA’s would sound pretty good streaming with the music program, and EQ set to increase bass, with some good foamies!

Is that a reference to our earlier exchange Vis -à- vis the copyright symbol?

#49

Is that a reference to our earlier exchange Vis -à- vis the copyright symbol?
[/quote]

Nope …!

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#50

Just to clarify this point so you don’t misunderstand, what KeithL was saying was that the fully vented open dome allows people with good/better low frequencies hearing (like those with a ski slope loss that doesn’t drop sharply until around 1 or 2 KHz) to still hear the natural unaided low frequencies sounds that can freely travel through the open dome’s vents without any obstruction.

Since your hearing loss doesn’t fit into this category above because you do have significant enough low frequency loss, the open vented dome wouldn’t do you any good to try out anyway because you DO need the amplification in the lows.

Now that you said you have open skeleton acrylic molds with a vent in each, one easy thing to try is to plug up the vent to see if you get more bass improvement or not. It may come at the expense of more occlusion, but if the vent is big, there may be plug options to not close the vent completely but just narrow it down to smaller openings as a compromise. That way you’re not fully occluded but still can plug up some of the leak in the lows.

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#51

@flashb1024: There’s no room in my ear canals for foamies, flash. My acrylic moulds seal them off completely.

Actually, I am quite satisfied with the quality of the music reproduction I enjoy with my Oticon More1 mini-RITES by Demant Corp.

#52

Space mainly. Though some duo-Receivers are made with a pair of back to back drivers that can be mismatched to have different peak resonances. More receivers aren’t really suitable outside of Audio-Drivers due to space/power needs.

Apart from direct Class-D demodulation (which I’m not sure can be done over multiple receivers (or is even a thing any more)), if you can get 9KHz + from a single receiver, the incremental benefit of adding more boxes to the design doesn’t help with a minimalist ‘space-diagram’.

Essentially; 2 receivers doubles the drive failure modes, doubles the cost of the rec unit, doubles the space used and adds what; an octave to the bottom or to the top of the response? Don’t forget, you’re still limited by many of the construction constraints; you can’t make one like a woofer and the other a tweeter.

Positives; better damping and less physical feedback as you cut down the ‘waggle’. Perhaps 12-16Khz bandwidth, but nearly all of that will be in the top end.

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#53

@Um_bongo: Thank you very much for taking the time to explain this.

As time passes with my new Mores being in my ears 17-18 hours a day, I am coming to an ever greater appreciation of the role the brain and memory of sounds plays in the plastic reconfiguration of how we perceive incoming auditory signals.

I deprived my auditory cortex of input for 6 years, and my target shooting scores attest to the fact that my vision took over a large part of the unused turf. (I’m curious to see whether or not my visual acuity with open sights will diminish as my sense of hearing reclaims more of the neuronal function it surrendered to vision due to sensory deprivation.) Suffice it to say that my BrainHearing is improving the longer I wear my hearing devices.

I’ve listened to several of Dr Donald Shum’s lectures on AudiologyOnline, and I think he and Oticon are generally right: if the hearing instruments can send good quality signals up the auditory nerve, the brain has exquisite capacities for decoding even the imperfect neural code transmitted by a damaged ear.

I’m experiencing first hand the significant improvement in my hearing as my auditory cortex retakes its ground and (as @Blacky has suggested) brain learning reintegrates the memory of sounds past with the real input of sounds present, as rebalanced and amplified by my Oticon More1s.

So, I understand your explanation - perhaps not with perfect scientific accuracy - but I catch the drift. Quality is paramount, one BA receiver can deliver it, more than one can complicate it, and bass sounds are still the bugaboo.

[PS: I learned as a performing musician that bass is as much perceived through sympathetic vibrations within the body as it is heard through the ears, but that’s a musing for another occasion.]

Thanks for replying to my post!

#54

RRRREALLY RESOUNDING REPLY, RIGHT?
Respectfully richly, remotely, resoundingly youRs…
Da Flasherrrr

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#55

Grammer, son, ya gotta getcher grammer write!

#56

:thinking: Just seeing whether yer on yer game, flash! Just checkin’ musician! MUSICIAN!

Nice catch, flash … [Moral: Don’t clash with the flash!]

[So … I fixed it, all right? Sheesh!]

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#57

Been wearing OPN1’s for a couple of years and have never heard of a music program. How do I enter this mode?
Does it work with streaming? I have found streaming good enough to cause severe goosebumps with the proper music.
How interesting to find this out.
Thank you.
Now how do I do it?