Can anybody comment about these new Widex Allure’s performance in speech and noise?
That’s the absolute most important thing for me
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Won’t be able until people trial them, and yes I think everyone wants the same, the holy grail of hearing in noise.
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I think this is going to be a very much your milage may vary with speech in noise. My guess, based on previous Widex hearing aids and the companys direction in general, is that speech in noise will be an improvement over previous models, but not as harsh or cutting as something like Resound, Starkey or Phonak. It will really depend on how you as an individual work with that. For myself I imagine the Widex solution will be fine as I don’t have that much trouble in background noise compared to other situations. For others, they really benefit from the harsh reduction of noise. Widex generally doesn’t do harsh, they try to leave sound intact. Hope that makes sense.
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What surprises me is that Widex went back to their ‘old’ model, while they had clear reasons for the L-shape of the Smart-RIC. Also, they say nothing about the use of AI. Maybe that is a given today? Anyway, I need to replace my Beyonds 440’s, so I am looking forward to trying the new platform. Though probably in Europe they will be available later than in the US.
I am a bit surprised. 5 years since last plaform released and only 4x more processing power and 4x memory? In addition, I think that no L-shaped housing is a step back.
Yesterday I tested woman “s” voice on Phonak Target software. If you set the graph as output (not gain) and mark “show live output”. You can see that the most rightward columns (at 6k and 8k) moves up with every “s”.
That improves significantly when I changed from “2” to “0” length, and even more when I lift the bottom of my Paradise HA by 1 cm to align the mics more horizontally. My old cShell with “0” has a 3 mm AOV; I must plug that vent to close it, although retention is poor, and I am often forced to push it back from time to time.
The difference was even 10-15 dB in 6-8k with every “s” assuming that Target measures it correctly.
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I’m not surprised re moving away from the L shaped design, it wasn’t nearly as popular as they thought it would be, a lot of people said it was uncomfortable and people wanted the button back, which the new ones have as far as I’m aware.
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Yes I have the SmartRic and I’m hoping they come out with that form factor someday. I also saw that the Allure charger didn’t look as nice as the one I have and didn’t have a cover and didn’t look very portable…which is also a step back if that’s true.
I’m wondering whether the Allures would work for my level of loss.
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Good question!
My hearing is worse now. I’ll keep following and see what others say. Please let me know if you learn more.
I have Phonak Audeo ParadiseP90 R hearing aids with the new 5.0 Power Receivers
I was cautioned 4 years ago I might need higher power behind the ear hearing aids.
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The travel charger will be coming a bit later.
From the build photos I’ve seen, the allure microphone IS playing off the the smartRIC microphone. They are still recessed further down like the smartRIC to mechanically reduce wind and handling noise. The tilt isn’t the same as the smartRIC, but it’s still a bit more than other hearing aids. Sort of an “in between” situation.
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I wish I could say my SmartRIC is a lot better with artifact and wind noise than my 9030 Philips was but if it is it’s not that noticeable. At some point, on a windy day or riding my mtn bike wind is amplified. More so on my left ear, which was the case with the Philips. Ear shape or the slightly higher gains for the left ear must account for that. I’ve learned to live with this and mostly ignore it. Noise that are obviously noise to me and not speech can get amplified along with speech, probably a complaint of all HA users of all brands at one time or another. Sometimes I’ll hear a loud noise and mutter to myself…how the hell didn’t my HA know that was noise, lol. And if I move my head a certain way, yawn, etc. where my ear must move a bit relative to my head I get that annoying scratchy artifact noise that is obviously being amplified. No doubt these are all special cases very difficult to deal with that all of us HA users experience and dislike, lol. I have 2 years before I can get an Allure under my insurance, although I found out I still have an $800. credit I could apply if I desperately wanted and needed the Allure. Taking a wait and see approach for now.
Yeah, unless you’re wearing an IIC or a sadly discontinued MIH, wind sucks.
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@drcrandon I got Allures earlier this week, and yesterday I spent some time doing speech-in-noise testing. I posted in another thread last month about how I go about testing.
The short version is that the Allures work as well for me as the two best speech-in-noise hearing aids I’ve tried (Phonak Spheres, Apple Airpods Pro 2), at least for what these tests measure. These 3 models all perform much better than my old Oticon Opn 1 hearing aids, for reference.
Based on my limited experience in real-life noisy situations so far, I’d say that the Allures are not quite as good as the Phonak Spheres in complex noisy situations, but close enough that I’ve decided to keep them over the Spheres. I just like the sound quality much better (especially for music). The main difference with speech-in-noise is the Spheres seemed to do a better job in with voices around the restaurant table, even if someone wasn’t directly in front of me, and quieting people at the next table over.
Details on the percent of words I correctly identified with each hearing aid, using the two different approaches mentioned in the linked thread above:
| Oticon Opn 1 | Airpods | Sphere | Allure | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SNR -2.5 | 36% | 48% | 68% | 60% |
| SNR +2.5 | 68% | 76% | 80% | 84% |
| AVERAGE | 52% | 62% | 74% | 72% |
| % Words Correct (72 dB speech) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Noise Level | Airpods | Sphere | Allure |
| 74 dB | 48% | 52% | 54% |
| 72 dB | 62% | 56% | 56% |
| 69 dB | 72% | 66% | 72% |
| AVERAGE | 61% | 58% | 61% |
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Nice. Don’t the Spheres have some Active Noise Reduction that only the Airpods have. My Airpods are great for streaming music and noise but the occlusal effect is horrible for me. And also the ear buds are uncomfortable and don’t stay put all the time, so I rarely use them. Was any of this data with Puresound? Love the natural sound I get from Puresound and my SmartRic but I’m only able to utilized Puresound because the gains are set lower by my audi who has be set as inexperienced. I just can’t tolerate my voice or the gain of being set to experienced.
I did the speech-in-noise testing using Universal. I had previously tried Puresound with the “word-in-noise” test at checkhearing.com, and it performed much worse than Universal. So I didn’t think it’d be worth experimenting with further. That said, Allure Puresound does seem better in noisy situations than I remember Moment Puresound being, but still not as good as Universal.
The puresound gains are 3-7 dB lower than the Universal gains in the SmartRIC so speech will always be amplified less. To me it’s more comfortable and more natural sounding but no necessarily louder and so I probable don’t hear quite as well with puresound but comfort and my own voice not overwhelming me is more important. But there are times I do resort to Universal…in noisy enviroments or when I’m have trouble hearing speech of someone over the noise.
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I feel it’s how the mics have been set up in universal and Pure that make the difference. IN universal I can clearly hear the mics have been set to a more binaural effect, sounds seem to come at you from different directions. with Pure, nice as it sounds, it’s clearly all mics in omni mode (can’t comment about the allures as not tried them) and a wall of sound just hits you from all sides. It can be really overwhelming. I’ve fond turning down the highs does help somewhat but only somewhat. It also seemed to clip the headroom at points meaning the ha’s would turn things down or squish them. I guess because of the lack of the standard compression or whatever it uses. That said, pure was amazing to listen to speakers with and just so nice to have all that nasty delay gone away.
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