Hello. I’m new to the forum and appreciate the help. I am 50 years old with mild, high frequeny, asymmetrical hearing loss and moderate to severe tinnitus. I just received my first pair of HAs: Widex MomentSheer. I chose these because I am audiophile, DJ, and music lover. I believe that the Puresound technology would meet my needs.
So far, the Puresound program has a very noticeable noise floor. I experience a constant static hiss that is not affected by gain or eq setting from the Moment app.
I have emailed my audio who thinks I might have a “bad speaker”.
What is your experience with Puresound? It is noisy for you? Do you enjoy it for natural sounding music? any tips for getting the most out of this program?
I am on Widex Moment 330s HAs (bought in 2020).
Yes, I get static/white noise/floor noise when I use PureSound today. However in the beginning I did not get floor noise when using PureSound, so I think it’s something related to my HAs aging and the internal components becoming noisier.
No, there is no engineering/design flaw/fault causing the noise floor your experiencing. That is how the initial settings present, the gain on low levels sounds is too high so those sounds are louder, boosted from what would be normally experienced unaided. It’s the out of box setting, but your audi can reduce the low level gain settings and the background noise will go away. While you audi is in the settings, have them flatten the gain levels over the frequency range.
Its a pity more audi are music aware with HA setup, especially those certified/trained on Widex.
Right ok. Makes sense. I don’t we did any fine tuning of the PureSound program specifically. Just general curve eq. My hearing loss is fairly mild so I think turning the gain down on the low freq is a good place to start. Thanks.
That first session is really physically fitting the aid and getting the prescriptive correction in there. It’s the weeks and months after you notice things to tweak. Given the demand for and marketing to musician types, it’s shame it’s us customers catching basic things.
As far as static or running noise, I find that PureSound’s certainly sounds different, higher in frequency than that in Universal. Particularly if you are only hearing it in that program, I think the noise you are hearing is inherent to the program rather than the speaker.
I have run real ear with both programs before, and in PureSound I am not able to reach targets without inviting significantly more feedback. For patients with more significant hearing loss, this is particularly prohibitive.
“Alarming” is not necessarily the term I’d use, but it is certainly unfortunate that such a unique processing style is not more accessible for users with more severe hearing losses. If you have Widex’s GPS Compass fitting software it even alerts you when they think PureSound is inappropriate, and it’s typically when the hearing loss is worse than mild. Even in the fine tuning screen, when you switch into PureSound the feedback limits come down significantly. Again, it’s likely not an issue if your hearing loss is not that severe, but it would be nice if the feedback limits in PureSound were higher.
Since 3 weeks I’m having the SmartRIC on trial. So far I haven’t experienced the benefits of PureSound. For speech I’m using the Universal program, for listening to music the Music program (which sounds wonderful).
My initial impression of PureSound was that it sounded a bit sharp and throttled. To answer your question I didn’t hear any hiss or noise in general.
Haven’t posted in a while. The hiss is still an issue with Puresound. I’ve been to 2 fitting sessions with my Audi and now just came home from a session that included a Widex rep via zoom.
No one can figure out why this is hissing is happening or change it in anyway. The theory is that with Puresound, all omni-directional mics are on and open. Since my right ear hearing loss is so minimal, I’m hearing more than I need to from those mics. But none of their adjustments are having any effect. They even ran a diagnostic check and confirmed the HAs are functioning properly.
Next steps are Widex is talking to their engineers and I’m trying a different Widex model to see if the same problem exists.
I’m getting pretty close to giving up on Widex if not the HAs in general.
You didn’t entered the audiograms, which may help to give you proper advice. Speculating, maybe you hear internal noise of HA? I am not sure. Maybe there should be expansion setting adjusted?
Widex rep confirmed it is not internal circuit noise. They reviewed all settings and tried different changes. Nothing had an impact on the hissing noise. Just sharing my experience at this point as it seems rather unique.
And based on other’s experience and Widex rep comments, I should not be hearing hiss with Puresound.
What about the other programs, Universal and Music?
Music listening (except streaming, which I never do anyway) is great with the Music program.
Why is PureSound so important for you?
only happens with puresound. that program has the best sound to my ears. all other programs sound “too digital/enhanced/unnatural” and is the entire reason why i chose widex
The HA listens to the ambient sound for the frequency bands to make louder for your prescribed fitting. In the band, the sounds detected are boosted at different amount of “gain” depending on how loud the sound is, low, medium, or high level. Think a bird chirping in the distance, nearby, and beside you. Fittings typically apply different amount of gain to each of those levels. Two problems I had with this were, (1.) With the low level sound gain set to high I was finding that ANY noise was being annoying (the hum of the fridge at the other end of the house) and, (2.) when listening to music the levels weren’t natural, effectively compressing the music. Neither good for purity of the sound, listening/hearing experience. In the setup, the ratio between adjacent levels (low to mid, mid to high) can be displayed so the gain levels can be adjusted to ‘flatten’ the gain overall.
What in particular are you having an issue with in PureSound?
