Why Widex MOMENT is a huge step towards natural hearing
We asked WIDEX Innovation Team Manager, Adam Westermann, to explain just why WIDEX MOMENT™ represents such a paradigm shift in the search for more natural sounding hearing solutions.
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For years, hearing aids have been great helping people with hearing loss reconnect with the sounds in their lives, but still, many users stop wearing them. For Adam, this represented the biggest problem in the hearing aid industry today, and one he was determined to solve:
“When we look out in the world, we have an incredible number of people with a hearing impairment who do not wear hearing aids and who do not get the benefits from hearing aids in their daily lives. So, we really looked at what are the main drivers for people putting their hearing aids into the drawer or not getting hearing aids in the first place”.
The problem of delay-based distortion
It turns out that, while traditional hearing aid technology is great for users with more severe hearing loss, if you have mild to moderate hearing loss, the benefits are often compromised. Adam explains, “We see that some people have a negative experience the first time when they wear hearing aids. They say ‘oh, this is not how the sound used to be before I had a hearing loss’. We found out that it’s really the result of sound coming from the outside into the ear canal and then being processed also through the hearing aid, and the delayed difference between the two creates this comb-filtering sound, this robotic tube-like sound which is not very natural”.The most natural sound for all users
For Adam, solving this problem was the key to bringing the best quality of sound to all users, regardless of where they sit on the fitting range. It also represents the next step on WIDEX’s journey towards natural sound. “Since at Widex it’s really the core of what we do: we try to make hearing aid sound as natural as possible”, Adam explains. “The solution we came up with was a hearing aid with virtually no delay. We call it ZeroDelay™ Technology, where we have extremely fast processing of the sound through the hearing aid”.
The ZeroDelay™ technology that powers the incredibly natural sounding PureSound™ pathway of WIDEX MOMENT™, requires processing speeds as fast as 0.5 milliseconds. That’s at least 10 times faster than other leading digital hearing aids1.
Approved by users in real life hearing situations
But this isn’t just a case of impressive sounding numbers; users love the sound. In fact, 91% users who tried out WIDEX MOMENT™ across situations in their daily lives, were satisfied with the great sound quality2.
But for Adam, this is just the beginning; “We believe now that with PureSound™, and the WIDEX MOMENT™ platform, we begin a new voyage into hearing aids that have very natural, almost transparent sound, so you don’t even notice that you’re wearing them”.
- Balling, Laura W., Townend, Oliver, Stiefenhofer, Georg, & Switalski, Wendy. 2020. Reducing Hearing Aid Delay for Optimal Sound Quality: A New Paradigm in Processing. Hearing Review 27(4): 20-26.
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