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Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

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Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#21

Post by dhosek »

yojo wrote: post #15
remh wrote: post #2

I’m sorry I can’t answer your question but on a related note I wonder if anyone has used AirPods Pro 3 as hearing aids either as their first pair or replaced their traditional ones with AirPods? I’m considering getting a pair for a family member who has been reluctant to wear traditional ones but I think would be willing to do AirPods.

I got my father-in-law to try AirPods Pro 2 last year. He’s needed hearing aids for about a decade, but wouldn’t get them, I think for vanity reasons. I’m at the in-laws for thanksgiving and he’s wearing the AirPods now. From the other side, it’s night and day. We can have conversations. He can hear my kids. The TV volume is set to reasonable levels. Sample size of one, but it’s been a tremendous improvement. A lot o…

I would absolutely love for Apple to make proper hearing aids or license their chipset to a HA maker. Before I became completely dependent on HAs I had a set of Beats headphones with the Apple wireless chipset in it and the ease of switching between devices with it was amazing. With my current HAs I essentially only can use it for sound with my phone.

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#22

Post by aaronbrethorst »

math wrote: post #9

I'm not a hearing aid wearer, but I came across https://www.envoymedical.com/ during investment research activities. They seem to have the leading candidate for a fully implantable device. FDA Breakthrough Device designation. I'm interested in the reaction of any hearing aid wearers to what they are developing.

As a 40-something without any noticeable hearing loss, I’d actually be very interested in having Bluetooth ‘earbud’ implants.

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#23

Post by pugworthy »

dhosek wrote: post #17

I just replaced my Jabras (from Costco) whose microphones stopped working. I tried Phonaks and found that the use of Bluetooth to connect to my iPhone was painfully flakey (there were certain locations in my neighborhood that every time I walked in front of a particular house, I would lose audio). I ended up returning them and the only MfI hearing aids the audiologist I went to (I was limited by what was in-network b…

Yea I gave up on the phone integration with mine. Whenever I’d get a call or some audio thing was going to happen, my HA mics would go silent and second or so later the audio would come in. So answering a call i would often miss the callers initial words. Or driving instructions would be “…in 1000 feet” with the “turn left” or “turn right” part missing.

I do participate in the Reddit subs but am interested in the technologists view of HAs I might get here. They are fascinating, necessary devices for myself.

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#24

Post by [deleted] »

Semaphor wrote: post #18

I’ll chime in with a sidebar: Anyone got any experience using hearing aids for the "hearing in noise" issue (aka. King-Kopetzky syndrome or lack of cocktail party effect [0], part of a whole bunch of things also called adhd for ears). Essentially I have filtering issues, as soon as multiple people talk, I can’t really understand anyone anymore, unless they very directly speak into my ears so they are significantly lo…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#25

Post by pugworthy »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #16
yojo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my father-in-law to try AirPods Pro 2 last year. He’s needed hearing aids for about a decade, but wouldn’t get them, I think for vanity reasons. I’m at the in-laws for thanksgiving and he’s wearing the AirPods now. From the other side, it’s night and day. We can have conversations. He can hear my kids. The TV volume is set to reasonable levels. Sample size of one, but it’s been a tremendous improvement. A lot o…

I did the same with my mom. Big improvement for her. She’s also subsequently gotten ‘real’ hearing aids and finds them much more fiddly to use than her AirPods Pro. She’s 83, FWIW.

Yes I’d love HAs as easy to use as AirPods. AirPods with the HA form factor would have some real advantages, even for those not hard of hearing.

I don’t ever hide my hearing aids but the discrete nature of them is great.

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#26

Post by mustntmumble »

I'll tell you what is NOT hot!

I have Phonak Audeos paired over bluetooth with my iPhone. A few years prior, I used to have Oticon, also paired with my iPhone.

With the Oticon, if I made a cellphone call, the iPhone would use the default iPhone microphone while the audio would stream to my hearing aids. It was good that way because in a noisy environment I could hold the iphone right up to my mouth and the other party would be able to hear what I was saying.

With the newer Phonaks, I was very disappointed to find that the new hearing aids would only use the microphone input that is built into the hearing aids themselves, and not the iPhone mic input. I discovered this when I realised that talking directly into iPhone mic did not make it any easier for the other party to hear me.

I complained to my Audiologist who explained that yes, the new hearing aids were copying the behaviour of Apple AirPods, which also have the mic input on the earpod itself, and that there was no way at all to configure the Phonaks to use the iPhone mic input instead.

Why is this a problem you might ask? Because my hearing aids are Behind The Ear (BTE) and thus the mic input on the hearing aid is a good 4 inches away from my face and thus my voice cannot possibly sound as clear as when I could speak directly into an iPhone mic.

When I next replace my hearing aids, I shall look for aids that do not mimic this crappy AirPods behaviour...

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#27

Post by remh »

yojo wrote: post #15
remh wrote: post #2

I’m sorry I can’t answer your question but on a related note I wonder if anyone has used AirPods Pro 3 as hearing aids either as their first pair or replaced their traditional ones with AirPods? I’m considering getting a pair for a family member who has been reluctant to wear traditional ones but I think would be willing to do AirPods.

I got my father-in-law to try AirPods Pro 2 last year. He’s needed hearing aids for about a decade, but wouldn’t get them, I think for vanity reasons. I’m at the in-laws for thanksgiving and he’s wearing the AirPods now. From the other side, it’s night and day. We can have conversations. He can hear my kids. The TV volume is set to reasonable levels. Sample size of one, but it’s been a tremendous improvement. A lot o…

Thank you! My family member is in a similar boat. I guess I found my christmas present for him.

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#28

Post by julianlam »

retrac wrote: post #5

I have worn hearing aids since childhood in the '90s. Moderate sloping to profound loss. Been through all the tech since the equalized analog era. For a while now, like the last 15 to 20 years, since hearing aids went DSP, I had not been much impressed by each new generation. At the risk of sounding like a bit of an advertisement, that changed this year. I have the new Oticon Intent. RIC style aid. They have some of…

Thank you so much for commenting.

As a parent with a child with mild-to-moderate hearing loss it is heartening to know that the hearing aid technology is progressing, and progressing well!

He's been using a pair of Phonak Skys since infancy, and while they can be tuned by the audiologist I sometimes wonder what it'll be like if and when he gets his next pair.

Re: Ask HN: Hearing aid wearers, what's hot?

#30

Post by KingMob »

mustntmumble wrote: post #26

I'll tell you what is NOT hot! I have Phonak Audeos paired over bluetooth with my iPhone. A few years prior, I used to have Oticon, also paired with my iPhone. With the Oticon, if I made a cellphone call, the iPhone would use the default iPhone microphone while the audio would stream to my hearing aids. It was good that way because in a noisy environment I could hold the iphone right up to my mouth and the other part…

I have the same problem, but I always assumed it was Apple's fault. I don't know why the HAs/Airpods have the final say.

I don't think there's a way around it on the iphone, but I was able to cobble a fix for my macbook at least. It uses Shortery to run a Shortcut whenever my HA connects. The Shortcut runs a shell script that uses https://github.com/deweller/switchaudio-osx/ to determine the built-in mic and switch back to it immediately:

BUILTIN_MIC_ID=$(switch-audio --list-input | jq 'map(select(.name == "MacBook Pro Microphone")) | .[0].id') switch-audio --set-input="$BUILTIN_MIC_ID"

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