I’m no pro, and just primarily listen to tunes from my phone, and try to play guitar at home.
Had Phonaks with the Compilot for the first 7 years of HA’s. Streaming was nice to have, but had to accept that the quality was on a par with the first tiny transistor radio I had as a kid. Had the Bernafon/Phillips 9010’s for the last 6 years. Better, but still not great, even with their dedicated Music program. But I figured that was just life with poor hearing and using something designed for speech for other purposes. When playing guitar, usually took Phonaks/Phillips out, as there were just too many artifacts/tuning issues - it all sounded far better without them!
Got the 9040’s a few weeks ago, and for general use/in-noise they proved to be FAR better than the 9010’s. About the same for streaming/playing music, unfortunately.
Back to Costco to have them add a dedicated Music program. I also printed out and handed them the guide found at: [https://musicandhearingaids.org/] (https://musicandhearingaids.org/)(Thank you to others that posted this link!)
My fitter laughed, and said - “That’s everything we do when setting up a Music profile!, but I’ll save the printout for the new guys here!”.
So he added the “Hi-Fi Music” provided by Phillips, and whatever additional (or not) he had to do based on the article. He also did a bit of change to the Streaming settings - more bass, more volume.
In the store, I tested. With the General profile, only slightly better (due to the Streaming tweaks). Change to the “Music”, and I was blown away - far, far fuller, deeper, richer than either of the two previous aids!
Got in the car, and turned on the radio. In the General setting, adjusted volume on the radio itself (left HA’s at the defaults). It was as it always was. Switched to the Hi-Fi Music in the HA’s, and again just blown away. So much better, as above when streaming! Actually had to turn down the car radio a bit.
The downside: It’s best if there are no outside distractions from the music. Car noises, wind on the vehicle, fans running in store/at home, etc also come through to a high degree. So “quiet room” listening is best. Likely due to so many features turned off to enable the fullest range of music pass through. Directionality is limited, so seems that surround sound may be impacted - the music “in front” is great, but coming from the side/back is less.
Seems to be a keeper, and a setting I will now use frequently. Will post a bit more later after I do some A/B testing with the various modest level ear buds/headphones I have around, as well as, of course, playing the guitar.