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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?

#41

Post by seltzered_ »

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…

An elaboration on how complicated call handling can be with hearing aids (and how I wanted AirPods-like behavior): I assisted someone with purchasing hearing aids a year ago, and we first had a pair of Philips and returned them within a few months because they only worked with iPhone for supporting phone calls with the microphone on the hearing aids themselves, for Android it didnt work. Even the next generation Philips 9050 that supported Auracast didnt support this.

We ended up with Phonaks rebranded as Sennheisers. The audio quality during calls may not be as clear as a separate mic (what i believe you refer to as oticon), but from a user experience its nice to not have to fish out your phone to answer a call or wonder why you can hear the other person but they cant hear you.

Note that my complaint here is specific to Android support.

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

#43

Post by retrac »

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…

I'm completely lost in noise. The benefits for this kind of thing is part of why my audiologist pushed for hearing aids with directional microphones. And they do help. But it's not a fix. I'm still mostly lost in noise.

People rely on the (usually very large) dynamic range of hearing to be able to understand in those situations. In people with typical hearing the brain filters out the sounds too loud or too quiet to be what they are trying to listen to. But hearing aids act as compressors reducing the dynamic range.

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

#45

Post by EionRobb »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #31

Here's a crazy idea. I personally prefer the fidelity of an active ambient in-ear monitor (IEM), as used by musicians on stage over the best hearing aids. Once a year, I do a monthly trial with the latest hearing aid models and IMO the fidelity (especially low-end) and the comfort just is not there compared with the best active ambient IEMs. The difference between hearing aids and IEMs is blurring, but they are not y…

Does that setup work ok outside in windy environments? A lot of the 'active' audio systems I've found really focus on the wind noise while hearing aids will try to filter that out

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

#46

Post by thfuran »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #31

Here's a crazy idea. I personally prefer the fidelity of an active ambient in-ear monitor (IEM), as used by musicians on stage over the best hearing aids. Once a year, I do a monthly trial with the latest hearing aid models and IMO the fidelity (especially low-end) and the comfort just is not there compared with the best active ambient IEMs. The difference between hearing aids and IEMs is blurring, but they are not y…

They only get a couple hours better life even with a belt pack to fit more battery?

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

#47

Post by kayson »

A long time ago, I interviewed at a company called Earlens. They had a really interesting solution that used mineral oil to stick some kind of tiny speaker directly to your eardrum. The processor then beams the sound to the speaker. I think the first generation used a laser, but they've since switched to inductive coupling: https://earlens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/LBL00153vJ.ar...

One of the engineers I had lunch with actually used their own product and he seemed to like it. I get the impression it's a more premium tier kind of thing that may not be covered by insurance, though.

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

#48

Post by mrsvanwinkle »

furyofantares wrote: post #40

There's something I think must be possible and wonder if it would be useful: using noise cancelling earphones to mimic someone else's hearing loss. The idea is if you live with someone with hearing loss, you could enter the frequencies they can't hear, and cancel only those. Then you could spend a day with these in to try to get a more direct understanding of which noises they can hear and which they can't.

just the fact you instinctively thought of the use case to understand and empathize with this disability better, is very cool of you

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

#49

Post by fouc »

KingMob wrote: post #30
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 b…

Interesting, wouldn't the MBP microphone be even further away than the HA's microphone?

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

#50

Post by fouc »

seltzered_ wrote: post #41
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…

An elaboration on how complicated call handling can be with hearing aids (and how I wanted AirPods-like behavior): I assisted someone with purchasing hearing aids a year ago, and we first had a pair of Philips and returned them within a few months because they only worked with iPhone for supporting phone calls with the microphone on the hearing aids themselves, for Android it didnt work. Even the next generation Phil…

Seems a bit sad/ironic that it sounds like the solution in OP's case would be to switch to Android for that exact behavior that your side didn't want. (And that switching to iPhone would bring that "feature" in)

I personally use iPhone and I do prefer to leave phone in pocket for my phone call. But it does seems like a massive oversight to not make this configurable.

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