The KS10s are the Kirkland brand from Costco. They are made by Sonova who are the parent company to Phonak. They are almost identical to the Phonak Audeo Paradise P90RTs. I have a great Costco Audiologist who is ‘on-side’ with me and happy to work to get the aids programmed appropriately for both hearing spech and playing/listening to music. As others will reiterate here, the key is getting an audiologist/Hearing aid fitter/specialist who is knowledgeable and who you can work with. Good luck!
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Thanks everyone for your generous observations. But I’m still trying to understand the term “adaptive compression” because I want to be aware if it’s something that could interfere with the musician playing an instrument program on the Signia Pure that I am trialing.
All that I’ve read about it so far is that it optimizes speech within noise so the hearing aid user can pick up the soft and not have the louds too much.
I’m not at all sure about adaptive compression, so take the following with a grain of salt. As a rule, compression programs that are oriented towards speech in a variety of environments, or speech in general, don’t work well with music. It’s possible–but I don’t know for sure–that this is another program that needs to be disabled for playing. You really want unfiltered compression for music. You don’t want a program that aims to focus on the decibel range of speech, that’s far more limited than what a good music program allows.
Thank you thank you Jeffrey you are spot on! After I watched a video on this topic of adaptive compression it seemed overwhelmingly focused towards speech perception and a variety of background noise and whether the speech was soft or loud…That has not to do with the environment of live music being played on my piano! So when I see my Audi and the rep again I’m going to double check this speech beneficial style of compression is turned off in the musician playing an instrument program.
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Yes, turning that off may do the trick. I was amazed at how turning off feedback management instantly cured the issues I was having. I don’t have adaptive compression on my musician program. Best wishes! It’s a very good thing when aids work well with your instrument!
also: most audi’s don’t understand programming for a musician. And what’s needed for that goes against everything they’ve been trained for and what they usually work with, namely, making aids work for speech recognition. Two Signia audiologists and my audi didn’t understand what I needed to make my aids work. The Signia reps in particular were nearly offended at my wanting to turn off features that are a selling point for their aids. However they were able to do what I asked very easily. It was a matter of working with them politely. And it worked out in the end. over on the Adult Musician site, one hears this story over and over.
Hello to all.
No, I’m not a Signia wearer, but a Phonak Paradise 70 wearer.
I would say that for any musician, turning OFF all feedback management (Phonak = “Whistle block”) is a MUST.
I tried everything else, which didn’t work.
Even minimum 1 out of 10 in the “Whistle block” parameter, produced very audible artefacts.
But the next job was to lower the gains in the G50 (ie. Phonak’s gain applied to inputs of up to 50dB) bands where feedback had to be attenuated to elimination.
My 6’ 8’ Bechstein grand piano now sounds completely different and amazing.
The partials, or harmonic outputs of notes in the 2 to 4kHz area, that used to be “seen” by the “Whistle block” algorithms as feedback, are now amplified in Hi Fi and heard in all their majesty.
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Yeah but the thing is it should all ready be off, as this is the default for music anyway, also another thing is to actually turn it off, you have to have frequency lowering enabled in music program, unlikely you would of asked for that right, but I guess your audiologist could of done this, frequency lowering is known to give audible artifacts for some people.
Default in Xfit (rationale) is
‘More Compressive’ so this is dependent on which rationale you have been fit with.
One more thing is you get 3 different music settings in the HD music program.
- Recorded music
- Live music
- Musician Setting
So these all give a slightly different fit, try them all with a recording of your piano in the office. If that doesn’t work,then have a look at doing DIY and make the adjustments on fly
You need to demo Widex hearing aids. As a musician I find them to be superior to others I’ve used and demoed: Phonak, Starkey, and Oticon.
I have already tried Widex moment hearing aids. Keep in mind that the modern grand piano it’s a very complicated sound. I very very much wanted theWidex to work out but it did not represent all of the natural sound characteristics of my 6 foot Grotrian-Steinweg Grand piano. Most conspicuously it had a nasty clunking sound at the very initiation where the hammer strikes the string. I have to complement their rep working with my Audi as the rep set up three sample music dedicated programs.
As I’m ending the trial This Friday of the Signia pure
HA, i’m also very disappointed it cannot produce the same natural representation of grand piano sound as my 11 year old Starkey S Series Aids…!
I graduated from conservatory school , played lots of chamber music with violin and
ello, so I have a very thorough background when my hearing was normal of acoustic piano sound.
Maybe the Oticon is next to try?
FYI, I’m currently wearing the Oticon More.
I don’t play piano, but a close friend does, and his playing is very clear and concise to me.
Attached is Oticon’'s tech paper on their MYMusic program rationale.:
72873uk_tech_paper_music_program.pdf (199.1 KB)
Definitely, and why not ReSound as well, I don’t have any doubt that you’ll find the HA your looking for, keep everyone updated on progress, the end result will be interesting for sure.
Sorry that the Signia didn’t work out for you. I guess the fixes just didn’t work. I have the AX7’s. I don’t know if or how much they’re different than the Pure.
I’ve heard good things about the More from other musicians.
A huge thanks to everyone for your really productive support in my search. I have tried a resound hearing aid and a phonetic and Livio and Hughes and halo from Starkey. I may go back and try again the Starkey Muse.
Just for the record I’ll look up which models of each brand and post them.
The product from Oticon i’ve heard reviewed very well by users previously two years ago was the “Opn.” Does anyone have experience with trying both this model and the current model “More?” … specifically for playing instrument as a musician?
Did you read my previous post with link to Oticon MyMusic program?
It basically is a big step up from the OPN Music program, as they used that as the initial starting point.
I wore the OPN 1 for 3 years, and the OPN S 1 for 1 year (same Music program on both), and it was great for me as an experienced music listener, live & recorded.
The More processor allows for more (not a pun) granular control of feedback management, and allows the fitter to customize the overall gains, and DNN.
The new MyMusic program is worth checking.
Thank you flasbb1024 for sending the paper about Oticon my music programming. I lightly charged through it and under number five it mentioned something along the lines of an input level of 70 DB. I’m trying to consume tech savvy information on this topic of finding a music program for playing a grand piano… is this 70 DB connected with adc? If I understand numbers for Widex they have 115 db Max on input level.
Playing an instrument, especially 6 foot grand piano or longer, it’s truly another animal of music program then listening to music. All music signal in this situation is acoustic. Music from a recorded situation is not acoustic in the purest sense of the word. It’s coming from a recorded speaker amplifier situation and being heard by another microphone amplifier situation.
I very much appreciate the inside tech info you sent and I’m going to take more time to read it. My next query on a new thread is the topic of adaptive compression. I think this style of compression can cause confusion for using a dedicated music program…?
What they are referring to with that 70dB SPL input is average loudness for programming purposes.
If you try the More, you’ll find MyMusic is has higher gain at default than the General program.
Both More 1 and More 2 have input headroom of 113dB SPL Here’s a screenshot:
I’m afraid that the Signia is not working out in the dedicated musician program for me. i’ve tried out all three variations the company rep set up and she was very positively interactive with me.
The “adaptive compression” makes me unclear how it truly interacts with a dedicated music program settings. I did a general Google search and found that Widex primarily ues slow compression. When the Widex rep set up a one to one compression ratio in the music program it made a beautiful improvement… however the initial beginning of sound when the piano key is pushed down still had a clunk… kind of wooden, like the key hitting the key bed… piano keys are buffered by bushings, and mine have been recently replaced.
So far all of the HA’s have not produced the beauty of all aspects in a grand piano sound that I experienced with the Starkey S series that’s 11 years old… which was described by my former audiologist as “ so linear.”
I’ll give a try to the Oticon.