When the Audiologist Becomes the Patient: One Buffalo-Based HCP Trusts Widex Allure for Herself and Her Patients

As both a Hearing Care Professional and a hearing aid user, Nicole Ball, AuD, brings a unique perspective to her practice. Based in Buffalo, New York, Ball is an audiologist at Life Sounds Audiology, where she not only fits patients with hearing aids, but wears them herself. 

Ball, who has years of experience as a hearing aid wearer, was immediately impressed when she began wearing Widex Allure™. “The sound is crisp and conversations – especially soft speech – are easy to follow,” she explained. 

For Ball, Widex Allure is one of her go-to solutions for multiple reasons; as a hearing aid wearer, it helps her stay engaged with her colleagues and patients, and as a clinician, it delivers the sound clarity and reliability she needs for everyone who walks through her doors. 

According to Ball, the response to Widex Allure has been overwhelmingly positive right out of the gate. “We do a lot of demos in the office, and Allure has produced several ‘wow’ moments,” she said. “Experienced users, especially, are impressed right away. I’m so thrilled to be able to both have and share this experience.” 

A Composer’s Perspective

One such patient is Tomás Henriques, who has a special relationship to sound. It’s not just a part of his life, it is his life. As a composer and PhD in music, he directs a research lab focused on electronic music and 3D spatial audio. When hearing loss developed in one ear, he began searching for a solution that wouldn’t compromise his professional ear. 

“I needed something that could handle sound as naturally as possible; something realistic, warm, and capable of accurately tracking moving sound sources. With Widex, I finally found that,” Henriques said.

Henriques began using Widex Beyond in 2017 and was impressed by its sound localization and natural quality. With Widex Allure, the improvement in speech processing took things to a new level. “There’s a huge leap in speech clarity, especially in noisy environments,” he said. “Aside from my profession, one of the biggest frustrations with hearing loss is going to a restaurant and missing the conversation. Thanks to Allure, that has completely changed.”

Henriques put his Allure hearing aids to the test during a local modern classic music festival, attending multiple concerts and social events in a variety of acoustic environments. “The performance was consistent and impressive,” he said. “The sound remained rich and realistic, and the speech focus was so much better than anything I’d worn before.”

The Journey from Skepticism to Enthusiasm with Compass Cloud

While Ball was quick to embrace the Allure devices themselves, she admits to having initial hesitation around Compass™ Cloud, the cloud-based fitting software designed to streamline the patient fitting process.

“When I heard that the in-situ audiometry step had been removed, I was admittedly nervous,” she said. “To me, that was always a core part of the Widex process. But once I went through the training, I saw that the calibration was accurate enough to eliminate it from the initial fitting. It made the whole process much more efficient.”

After using it several times and experiencing its efficiency gains first-hand, Ball is now a firm believer in the benefits Compass Cloud brings to both clinicians and patients. “The fitting process is fast and intuitive, and I don’t need to worry about software updates – which is huge,” she added. “It may seem like a small thing, but in a busy clinic, those small things make a big difference.”

With Compass Cloud handling the technical setup, Ball finds she has more time to focus on personalized patient care. “If we can make fittings more straightforward, it gives us more room for counseling and relationship-building,” she noted. “That’s where real care happens.”

Ball shared that she’s thrilled with the positive impact Widex Allure has had on both her personal and professional life, noting that the hearing aids provide both her and her patients with clear, crisp sound. “I’ve personally experienced the benefits of Allure’s sound quality, and it’s exciting to be able to share that with my patients,” she said.

Learn more about Widex Allure or contact us.