General Discussion

I've now been using a new pair of Widex Moment 440 hearing aids (behind the ear) for about a month, and have been very happy with them. Using the aid's Music mode (vs speech) to restore the high frequencies I had been missing made a huge impact on being able to hear detail from musical instruments, such as the timbre of piano sound.

I learned some things in the process. These units can be ordered with standard receivers at the end of the wire (the component in the ear canal) or with "power" receivers. I tried both. The standard receivers do their job well, preserving the transparency of the music without introducing any sound artifacts that I could detect. However, the power receivers somehow made the musical presence sound constrained, like being in a narrow chamber, so I stuck with the standard receivers.

I also tried custom ear molds, vs. the neoprene ear cups that the aids are supplied with. Again, they seem to do something to the sound that I didn't like on my first impression, I may come back to these later.

The specified frequency response of these aids is from 100 Hz up to about 9 KHz. I was pleased that wearing these units did not impair my hearing's natural low-frequency response (from double-bass instruments for example).

I was also gratified that the standard ear cups work great with my Stax headphones. This is a big deal because placing any object close to the ears ordinarily increases the probability of acoustic feedback, so compatibility with headphones is asking a lot of any hearing aid brand. Fortunately, I'm able to prevent feedback by inserting the ear cup/receivers deep into the ear canal, which I learned to do with practice.

The Widex smartphone app has some customization features besides choosing modes and providing phone compatibility that I'll want to play with some more. I also bought their Sound Assist external microphone accessory, which really helps with speech intelligibility in a noisy restaurant setting.

Thanks again for everyone's experiences and suggestions!

Oliver

Hi Oliver,

What a wonderful post on the forum. I was sorry I didn't get to go to the LA&OCAS event and see John's award presentation, but I am glad there was at least one member of our local club there to wish him well and represent us.

Do you know if there were other members from our group down there?

Cheers,

David

To follow up on my hearing aid inquiry, today I got to meet Michael Fremer at the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society awards luncheon in LA. He confirmed that the Widex Moment aid that he tried out is very phase coherent due to its low processing latency, and that folks have been very happy with them. This was great to hear, as I believe that my difficulty in perceiving soundstage depth while listening to jazz and orchestral ensembles is in part due to my hearing loss impairing my ears/brain’s ability to detect phase differences between instrument sounds arriving at one ear vs the other. I’ll likely get the Widex Moment aids sometime next year.

I enjoyed John Curl’s Counnas Innovation Award acceptance remarks along with all of the presentations. Another highlight was listening to the Martin Chalifour (principal concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic) masterful performance of two violin pieces, for which he played an actual Stradivarius instrument, a first time for me.

Thanks again for everyone’s help!

Much appreciate the Widex Moment info David and Kurt! I saw that model mentioned favorably in the Hearingtracker forum, but I was skeptical. Now I’m much encouraged, thanks!

Hi Oliver,

I have been using the Widex Moment 440 T-RIC for almost three years now, and they are a huge improvement over my previous set when used in the PureSound mode for listening to music, which can be switched on via my phone app. This mode turns off much of the digital processing that is useful for speech only. I had bought them based on the article that David referred to.

When using headphones, I don't use the hearing aids and have been very happy with the sound. Of course I use a powerful headphone amp so getting the volume that I need is not a problem. I use AKG K371 for closed back phones, and Focal Clear for open phones using a Schiit Jotunheim headphone amp, in balanced mode for the Focal Clear. Also good sound from the Koss ESP/950 with it's own amp.

Hi Oliver,

I'm not there yet, but I remember reading this article by Michael Fremer way back in 2020.

Two Months With Widex’s Moment 440 mRIC R D Hearing Aids

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/two-months-widexs-moment-440-mric-r-d-hearing-aids

You might find it worth checking out!

Best,

David

I read today that many hearing aid users have historically been frustrated with their digital hearing aids, particularly because their compression and DSP processing algorithms that are designed for speech did a poor job with music. The old analog aids were satisfactory for music but unfortunately are not offered by major manufacturers anymore. There is interesting discussion of this topic in the hearing loss forums at the Hearingtracker website.

I tried compensating for my high frequency hearing loss by using my graphic equalizer, but it messed up the soundstage and I use my 16 year-old hearing aids instead, somehow they seem to work well. Finding replacement aids that do appropriate justice to an expensive HiFi system and loudspeakers (as well as to live performances) will likely be difficult. Many folks had not been happy with trying to achieve some semblance of linear response in digital aids when they tried to “dial back” the DSP action in these units. There seem to be some hopeful signs of manufacturers paying more attention to the music use case more recently.

I look forward to finding out if anyone in the high end audio industry has carefully reviewed current hearing aid models with the aging audiophile in mind.

Thanks for reading!