“While hearing aids continue to evolve to include new features, we believe that quality of sound is and will always be central. Natural sound enables a hearing aid wearer to react to external stimuli – the sounds of the environment, the voices of family and friends, and more. This helps keep their minds active, and in turn, preserve brain function," says Laura Winther Balling, Evidence and Research Specialist at Widex. "This new report serves to further emphasize the role that a hearing aid's natural sound quality plays in this critical daily social participation."
The international survey included 101 experienced hearing aid users in seven countries including the United States, Canada, China, Germany, France, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Each participant was fitted with Widex Moment hearing aids and asked to rate their satisfaction with them in comparison to their own hearing aids from various brands.
Their responses suggest that high-quality sound better enabled their ability to participate in real-life moments and encounters. When asked how satisfied they are with their ability to participate effortlessly in everyday life, only 69% indicated that they can with their own hearing aids, while a whopping 90% indicated effortless everyday participation with the Widex Moment.
Overall, participants were reasonably satisfied with their own hearing aids at the beginning of the survey period, but after trying the Widex Moment, ratings of their own hearing aids significantly lowered. Their responses indicated that natural sound quality – which Widex is known for – is a key feature for overall hearing aid satisfaction.
"The fundamental purpose of hearing aids is to restore the ability to experience life, and this report showed how critical sound quality is to achieving that goal," Balling emphasized. "Unfortunately, according to recent studies, even slight hearing loss can result in social isolation, depression, anxiety and cognitive decline. Meanwhile, social factors have been shown to positively impact health outcomes. Being able to participate socially has serious implications for the health of the aging population – which is why a hearing aid's ability to provide natural sound is so important."
Widex Moment
Widex Moment hearing aids use proprietary technologies to create a more perfect, natural sound that's uniquely and automatically tailored to each wearer's listening preferences and profile. Its PureSound ZeroDelay technology all but eliminates processing latency, resulting in a more natural sound without the "tinny" distortions associated with other hearing aids. Plus, its SoundSense Learn technology leverages artificial intelligence to create a more personalized sound experience adjusted to the wearer's listening environment.
The company's Widex PureSound technology, available for the first time in its new flagship Widex Moment hearing aids, features two distinct signal processing pathways — a "classic" version and a new ZeroDelay Accelerator pathway that dramatically changes how hearing aids sound.
"Sound quality and the 'naturalness' of sound remain among the most-cited reasons people don't pursue hearing assistance, despite the great strides in hearing aid innovation made over the last decades," says Widex Head of Audiology Lise Henningsen. "When hearing aids went digital, drastic improvements in noise reduction and advanced signal processing came at a price, but Widex has figured out how to overcome it."
The new Widex ZeroDelay Accelerator reduces the processing delay in hearing aids to below 0.5 milliseconds — a remarkable technological feat considering Widex already leads the industry with the lowest system delay through its "classic" processing pathway. The company's unique, legacy time domain filter bank, 32kHz sampling rate, and 16kHz digital bandwidth create very high-fidelity sound across its family of hearing aids, with a processing delay under 3 milliseconds.
For the second, accelerated pathway in Widex PureSound-based hearing aids, signal processing is adapted to the ZeroDelay design to deliver the purest sound quality. Core functions, such as acoustics stability, adaptive gain control, and enhanced signal-to-noise ratio, continue to take priority, while others are modified for the faster ZeroDelay pathway. The two pathways — ZeroDelay and "classic" — exist side-by-side on the Widex PureSound platform. Depending on the needs of the wearer, a hearing care professional can program one or the other as the default mode. From there, the PureSound platform is adaptable to each user's situation and preferred hearing experience.
"The wearer of hearing aids with the two distinct pathways can switch between them based on where they are and what they want to hear, thereby enjoying far greater sound quality and a more natural experience in most situations," says Henningsen.
Read audioXpress review of the Widex Moment hearing aids.
www.widex.com
