Hearing aids (nor cochlear implants, for that matter) do not "restore hearing", except for light hearing loss. They are only like crutches (not even wheelchair). For example, to follow conversations or phone/skype with multiple people is very exhausting even with fancy device, because in most cases the "bandwidth" to the brain just isn't available. That said, the hearing aids vendor lock-in is really atrocious and ca…
I think skype is exhausting not for this reason but because algorithms cut speakers out when someone else starts speaking for echo and feedback suppression. I wish there was true full-duplex mode that assumes everyone is wearing headphones, so there aren't any reverberation concerns.
With all the advances in tech, why does it seem that hearing aids are still from the 80s? I guess ultimately you're limited by your interface to the brain (something maybe neuralink could address?), but even still shouldn't there be some "magic" machine learning stuff going on in this space? Not at all an expert in audio processing, but I would imagine that we could do a decent job distinguishing voices from backgrou…
I agree! We're working on this at AudioFocus (YC S19). You can see an old demo here: https://www.audiofocus.io/demo There are a lot of challenges with putting this in a hearing aid: low latency inference (10ms), small power budget, consistent performance, fault tolerance, etc. Still a fair amount of R&D to be done, but change is coming.
How many microphones do you need to do this filtering? I wear hearing aids myself and if you can do it that that level on a real hearing aid that would be amazing.
I just got myself some Costco Signature hearing aids a month ago. Its $1499/pair. Its made by a major manufacturer named Phonak. The feature set is close to their top of the line model. Half the cost of the hearing aids in the US is actually the fitting by the audiologist and they have to pay for their expenses. You have to spend considerable time with the audiologist to measure, fit and calibrate the device to your…
Why are multiple audiologist visits necessary? Can’t they just take a 3d scan of your ear and have a computer decide which shape will fit best? I recall when Apple introduced the EarPods, they said they scanned thousands of ears and derived a shape that would fit the most. So it is possible...
they have to tune the DSP settings to get the amplification et al. profiles to match the patient's individual hearing loss pattern. that takes custom interface/programmer hardware the manufacturers generally only (afaik) give to licensed audiologists as it takes specialized education to do this work properly. the ear dome/mold bits themselves are a minor component of the overall fitting process. (src: been wearing hearing aids for about thirty years)
As an aside, there's a lot of exciting regenerative work going on related to hearing at the moment. Sometime soon we may no longer need hearing aids. There are some neat drugs either in clinical trials or about to begin clinical trials that will re-grow hair cells and broken synapses in the cochlea (ex: FX-322, OTO-413, OTO-6XX).
wow! ah, other than naive googling on those drug candidate identifiers, are there any sources you'd recommend to read more about this?
(I have a genetic condition that tl;dr impacts hair cell substrate material leading to hearing loss by early teens. Being able to hear natively again would be ... words fail me.)
Hearing aids (nor cochlear implants, for that matter) do not "restore hearing", except for light hearing loss. They are only like crutches (not even wheelchair). For example, to follow conversations or phone/skype with multiple people is very exhausting even with fancy device, because in most cases the "bandwidth" to the brain just isn't available. That said, the hearing aids vendor lock-in is really atrocious and ca…
> Hearing aids (nor cochlear implants, for that matter) do not "restore hearing", except for light hearing loss
This claim is totally false for cochlear implants. I am a cochlear implant recipient and before the implant I had essentially no hearing in my right ear ("profoundly deaf"). With the implant in my right ear my hearing has been restored to 90%+ of normal hearing.
Apple already sells a hearing aid that they can’t legally call ‘hearing aid’. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209082 : “With Live Listen, your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch can act like a microphone that sends sound to your AirPods or Powerbeats Pro. Live Listen can help you hear a conversation in a noisy area or even hear someone speaking across the room.” It even supports hearing aids (a few? Some? Many? The most p…
Unfortunately live listen is more like a replacement for remote microphones, not the hearing aids themselves. It adds around 70ms latency with a bluetooth headset. This is enough to be very uncomfortable. For comparison, most hearing aids on the market today have around 8ms of end to end latency. Source: I've built a hearing aid and done extensive latency tests :)
I had a hearing aid app on the iOS app store for a few years, and all I got was whinging about my app not fully supporting Airpods/bluetooth headphones. I had in the app description and on the website recommending using wired headphones so there was no delay, but people don't understand how things work even when they are told point blank. The reason why people don't notice the delay with bluetooth devices during media playback is that media is delayed to sync with the bluetooth audio. When Apple deprecated wired headphones, I called it a day.
It's because it's a medical device. The OTC Hearing Aid Act will change that so Bose (and I would guess Samsung and Apple in the future) can sell hearing aids directly to consumers. Bluetooth 5.2 LE Audio will solve the vendor lock-in. So the future looks bright for us with hearing loss. Edit: And with iOS 14 you can use AirPods Pro as hearings aids by adding an audiogram to the Apple Health app. Works really well.
There is a hearing aid app called Fennex that seems to be very highly rated. It works with any IPhone running iOS 11 or later (thus less expensive IPhones) and works with any Bluetooth earbuds, not necessarily the AirPods Pro (thus less expensive earbuds). I have never owned an IPhone, but this app seriously tempts me to buy one.
I developed a hearing aid app for iOS in the past. You might not be happy with the delay that wireless earphones introduce.
Hearing aids are tremendously constrained with regards to power and mechanics. There is no way you will be able to get an FPGA in a hearing aid. An FPGA runnning complex DSP algorithms will: 1. Get hot. I don't want a +60C FPGA in my ear. 2. Eat up the battery. The batteries are small and fiddly to replace for an 85 year old with bad eyes and arthritis in the fingers. They should last for at least a week before needi…
is it possible to use the users phone for those calculations ? Think about a dumb hearing aid, with a microphone and bluetooth connection, which is able to connect to any compatible phone and phone does the processing.
Easier said than done. I developed a hearing aid app for iOS.
Looks like Chinese manufactures already sell hearing aid devices in the 25-50 USD price range. https://www.banggood.com/search/hearing-aid.html Unlike the device from the article (which would cost more like 10 USD than 1), these are rechargeable and fully integrated over-the-ear units. Would love to see a low-cost open/hackable hearingaid/hearable though. For example BOM of 5-10 USD. But then it should use a reprogra…
Damn that link made me happy. Was wondering if anyone has done to hearing aids what they did for glasses. We just brought my father progressive glasses for 100usd (would be 400+usd here at a 'normal' store). Now he needs a hearing aid and we're dreading the multi-hundred payment on top of what is covered with insurance for a basic device. So.. What's the catch with these cheap hearing aids? Why would we not buy these…
These are hearing amplifiers, not hearing aids. The difference being that hearing aids can boost certain frequency bands to compensate for hearing loss at those frequencies. The hearing amplifiers boost all the audio frequencies in a one size fits all manner. There's no signal processing going on. Maybe that is good enough for your father, maybe not.
So this is a very simple circuit. Basically a microphone amplifier directly connected to some earphones with a volume knob. No frequency control of any kind. I'm wondering why this sort of device is not already available like loupe type glasses that we can easily find. I'm thinking this has something to do with legislation and maximum allowed earphone sound levels? Or maybe it is too crude to be actually useful?
It is available, even as in-ear style "hearing aid", for <$10 from the usual factories. I gather it's a little problematic selling them in the US due to medical device regulations...
They can be sold here, but they can't be marketed as "hearing aids" afaik.