A new study shows that the innovative PureSound™ program in WIDEX MOMENT™ preserves speech understanding in noise.
The study, conducted by Kuk, Ruperto, Slugocki and Korhonen of Widex/WSA, demonstrates that Widex PureSound™ is as effective as the premium products of two other leading manufacturers for managing speech understanding in noise at realistic signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs).
What’s more, it shows that hearing aid users’ performance with the PureSound™ program is similar to that of people with normal hearing under the same realistic SNRs.
Why conduct the study?
In addition to the traditional WIDEX Universal signal path, WIDEX MOMENT™ has a whole new ultrafast signal path and sound processing in the PureSound™ program. And i's essential that this new signal path does not compromise the effectiveness of WIDEX MOMENT™ in real life.
Therefore, the Widex/WSA study examined whether the PureSound™ program, which operates an omnidirectional microphone, yields speech-in-noise performance that is similar to other premium digital hearing aids that include an adaptive directional microphone. The authors tested WIDEX MOMENT™ in an open-ear fitting under realistic SNR conditions.
About the new technology
WIDEX MOMENT™ has a unique
PureSound™ program that uses ZeroDelay™ technology to shorten the processing delay of the hearing aid to less than 0.5 ms across frequencies. This enhances the subjective quality of sounds processed by the hearing aid.
Implementing such an ultrashort delay, required the new design of signal path and sound processing features. The resulting more natural perception of sounds is achieved by preserving the temporal nuances and minimising the spectral distortion from comb-filtering.
This type of distortion typically occurs with open-ear fitting, due to the mixing of the natural sound and the delayed amplified sound.
Less distortion with PureSound™
Figure 1 shows how the temporal characteristics of the input sound in an open-fit device are distorted much less with PureSound™ than with leading competitors’ products.