Thanks for the suggestion about a dry-ear spray. A review article posted by MDB in 2017 led me to read a 2006 Widex white paper on venting and its pros and cons. I agree with the 2006 Widex paper that for the “naturalness” of hearing with a vent, you can lose a bunch of speech clarity, depending on the acoustics of your ear canal, the timing of your HA’s in processing, etc. I do a lot of noisy stuff, so I particularly like keeping the noise out. That’s why Phonak invented Activents in the first place. There are certain situations where open venting just doesn’t cut it. According to Phonak, that’s places like noisy restaurants and when streaming, where you might not want the streamed bass escaping your ear canals (what goes in easily can come out easily, too!).
Thread started by MDB in 2017 (it’s on a review paper): Article on open fit vs closed fit
2006 Widex white paper on venting mentioned in review cited by MDB: Article on open fit vs closed fit - #12 by jim_lewis
Widex pulled its original posting of the white paper, perhaps because the paper was from 16 years ago or maybe something to do with Widex’s acquisition by WS Audiology. So, there are several posts by me in the same thread trying to find a viable link for other forum members to download the paper in its original form to read.
Edit_Update: Actually, the Widex Pro site now has an archive of older “evidence” papers that go all the way back to 2000 or so.https://www.widexpro.com/en/business-support/evidence/#archive Many of the papers include Kuk as the lead author, as he was for the 2006 white paper. So, for whatever reasons, Kuk’s 2006 paper has been tossed from the Widex Pro archives but it’s hearingreview.com version is still available to read (Fitting Tips: How Do Vents Affect Hearing Aid Performance? | The Hearing Review).