Why you can benefit from using other hearing aid programs in addition to your default program

Published 09-08-2019
Last Updated09-01-2020

There’s no reason to stick to your default hearing aid program in every situation. Other programs can improve your hearing in certain situations.
Every hearing aid has a default program created just for you based on your specific hearing loss. And this program aims to give you the absolute best automatized hearing across the board.

In Widex hearing aids, this program is called Universal.

Even if you are happy with your Universal program, you may find yourself in situations where you need a different listening sensation than the one you get with Universal.

That’s only natural, because you probably have many different listening environments during a day. And while Universal can vastly improve your hearing vastly in most situations, there will be situations where other programs can be more beneficial.

For instance, if you want to attenuate sound when it becomes too overwhelming and give yourself immediate relief, without turning off your hearing aid and taking away all sound. Or, if you want to accentuate speech in certain situations.

In fact, there are probably several situations where the sound needs a slight tweak. And maybe you default to your Universal program, like most users do. But there are good reasons to use other programs available to you, because they can improve the listening experience in specific situations – that’s a proven fact.

More options for a great listening experience

Different hearing aids offer different programs. For WIDEX EVOKE™, you can get a Comfort program and an Impact program in addition to Universal (and other programs for specific listening situations like “music”).

The Comfort program is designed to give you a comfortable listening experience while still maintaining the auditory connection to your environment. It tones down very loud and very soft sounds.

In a new study, the field test showed that users preferred Comfort to the Universal program for general listening comfort. The same test showed that users preferred the Impact program to the Universal program when it comes to getting clearer speech cues and helping them hear speech in conversations – which is exactly what the Impact program is designed for.

The study’s lab tests of the same two programs confirmed the findings from the field work and found that the Impact program performed significantly better than the Universal program when it comes to speech intelligibility, while the Comfort program performed significantly better for listening comfort across different situations.  

Designed for specific listening needs

In addition to automatic programs, WIDEX EVOKE™ offers in-the-moment personalisation with SoundSense Learn, which is also a handy feature.

SoundSense Learn is an app-based feature that’s based on an advanced Artificial Intelligence algorithm with a very simple and intuitive user interface that helps you improve your hearing in the moment. It uses a simple A/B comparison, so with just a few taps on your phone, SoundSense Learn guides you to better hearing in every situation where you want to use it.

But even if you’re an avid user of SoundSense Learn, Comfort and Impact can be a true help in moments where you want to change programs fast or can’t seem to find the right solution for a given situation. Because whereas SoundSense Learn can be used in many different situations and contexts, Comfort and Impact have very specific purposes. With just the click of a button, you get listening comfort from loud noise levels or you get improved speech intelligibility.

So, if you find yourself looking for listening comfort or speech intelligibility, remember to switch programs and try out Comfort or Impact – or at least try them once in a while.

Read the full study of the Comfort and Impact programs
Learn about WIDEX EVOKE™

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