261–270 of 462 posts
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What exactly is the audiologist going to adjust to improve BT reliability?
Apply new firmware to the hearing aids. help you set your phone to work properly. Return them and use a different make/model that works with your phone.
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Is this really a problem in practice? I've always had a valid prescription when I buy glasses, but at the glasses store I just flash them the prescription on my phone for a few seconds. It's a PDF on official looking letterhead, but I don't think there's any verification. I suppose it's probably not the best idea to fake an eyeglass prescription, but it certainly seems like it would be very easy to do.
There isn't any verification. They certainly don't call the optometrist to verify. Not saying I've done this, but one could submit an old Rx and change the date in Photoshop as well as the name and number of the doctor and buy contact lenses or glasses online just about anywhere. Theoretically, of course.
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> What if, instead, the calibration process worked constantly? Give the user a button to press when they don't hear something well, and another when they do. On TVs, they call those buttons volume buttons, it is revolutionary.
A lot of the time it's not absolute volume. If you can't hear certain frequency ranges well, boosting the volume of all ranges is just going to drown out the ones you can't hear well.
We are seeing a long term consolidation between hearing devices and headphones. On the headphones side, we are getting smaller, truly-wireless headphones with some ambient sound features (such as noise cancellation, and iOS hearing features). New trends like AR would just accelerate the change due to the need to solve all day worn audio devices. On the hearing aids side, almost every hearing aid today acts as an alwa…
(I have a friend who's an audiologist...watch Starkey, they are very proactive about industry changes and headwinds.)
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Samsung phones have a feature that tests your hearing at different frequencies, creates a personalized EQ profile, and applies it to your earbuds: https://www.samsung.com/au/support/mobile-devices/customise-...
Cool. But without properly flat headphones and sufficient sound isolation, I wouldn't put a ton of trust into it. It's probably good enough for an temporary situation, but I wouldn't trust it long term. Improper amplification can damage your hearing further.
* If the earbuds you use to perform the hearing test are the same ones you use with the resulting EQ profile, why does it matter whether the earbuds are flat or not? If you're taking measurements in a transformed coordinate space, and applying those measurements in the same transformed coordinate space, shouldn't that be equivalent to taking measurements in the original coordinate space and applying them in the original coordinate space?
* Why isn't active noise cancellation a good enough form of noise isolation?
* If using an EQ profile that only matches your hearing loss imperfectly can damage your hearing, wouldn't the same thing apply to EQ profiles that aren't intended to correct hearing, like the media player presets "classical music", "rock music", etc.? For that matter, wouldn't it apply to a flat EQ profile? Is there something special about an imperfect hearing correction EQ profile, compared to other EQ profiles?
How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…
I guess one question is: do those things have to cost thousands of dollars? What are the primary cost components? Are the people doing these jobs highly paid? Are they highly paid because of high costs of college tuition? Would free college help lower their costs?
No. Hunters (and shooters) have been buying electronic ear protection for years at much lower prices. There is no FDA approval, and they are not needed so the manufactures have to compete. The result is hearing aids in everything but the FDA approval. Some people find they work better than hearing aids because the manufactures have to tune them to work well for their customers which means background noise reduction (not just gun noise reduction)
Don't get me wrong, those who are borderline find the hunters hearing protection better. If your hearing is very bad you need expert tuning for just year ears, and that can't be offered without FDA approval.
The high end ones are $200, and internally pretty much the same thing other than the programming. The cheap ones are $30 (but not programmable)
How much would you pay for: *Hearing test * Hearing aid fitting * Usage counselling * Follow up adjustments * Annual retest of your hearing * Replacement of lost hearing aids * Unlimited repair for 3 years ?? ====== I got out of the Audiology field in 2015. At that time all the above was included for every hearing aid we sold (Prices varied from $750 / ear - $3600 / ear. When I was in that field many companies tried…
Why is a doctor needed to do any of that?
Fantastic news. If you can afford the $5,000 - great! The current system works for you. 80% of people cannot and so are stuck. For folks with mild/moderate loss (where a LOT of people don't get help) something as simple as letting Apple tweak noise cancellation to be voice enhancing and providing a tuning and hearing test app in the iphone would be a godsend. The elderly miss out on a lot of family life because of he…
FWIW, there is a nuanced difference between hearing aids and iPods. Hearing aids basically apply a hearing-capability matched EQ to the incoming sound. Why this matters: Hearing loss is not uniform across frequencies, and we use huge portions of the spectrum for different functions (truck backup beepers vs. car engine noises, both used to identify what's coming your way).
We are seeing a long term consolidation between hearing devices and headphones. On the headphones side, we are getting smaller, truly-wireless headphones with some ambient sound features (such as noise cancellation, and iOS hearing features). New trends like AR would just accelerate the change due to the need to solve all day worn audio devices. On the hearing aids side, almost every hearing aid today acts as an alwa…
Reminds me of the Artemis Fowl series or the first Iron Man, awesome to see former science fiction coming closer to reality. Adaptive ear protection in real life would be really interesting on construction sites or for musicians...
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Right, I was only talking about that 1 part. (Wasn't suggesting there's no use for optometrists!)
I guess I'm a bit confused then - if it's part and parcel of a regular checkup, what's the value of breaking the refraction out into a wholly separate activity?
Extending your logic to other areas would end up with absurdities like needing a doctor to measure your waist size before you can buy clothes. "You should visit your doctor regularly anyway, what's the value of allowing people to buy pants without a prescription?"