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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?

#51
This is very unrelated but I worry about posts like these.

HN is a great place to get genuine thoughtful discussions compared to a big portion of the rest of the internet. Reddit used to be the place for finding genuine experiences for products with subreddits like buyitforlife (or more specific) but now these and other subreddits are filled with bots and marketeers promoting what they sell and hammering their competition in the same thread.

Some bots are already here but I fear when the marketeers come.

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

#53
post #49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's also my experience that people who use the Airpods audio in meetings = poor sound, whereas when they switch to the Macbook, it's much better.

I think the Macbook does some more advanced beamforming stuff to filter out sound coming from other directions.

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

#54
I have the Widex SmartRIC 220, and would buy them again. They are comfortable, have musical audio quality (Widex works with musicians), very low latency (reducing comb filter effect), and in general look and feel very professional.

As for technology, they use bluetooth low energy to connect to the smart phone, which works really well, with the caveat that the range is quite low and if it is in the pocket and you are moving around, media sound will often disrupt or desync intermittently. On the plus side, they last well over a day even with media use (WIdex says they last 37 hours without bluetooth use and that checks out). The case provides charge for about a week, and has wireless and usb-c charging.

They are quite pricey, but there are several options (110, 220, 330, 440), and the 220 were more than enough for me. The app has several modes, including directional focus mode, and you can define your own. I sometimes use a different mode for listening to concert music, that disables most filters such as volume protection.

I am wearing them for 9 months now, and there was no situation (concerts, traveling, work, sports, etc) were they gave me any issues whatsoever.

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

#56

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.

Cancelling aperiodic noise requires time travel to work, doesn’t it? So you could feel what it feels like to be that person on an airplane bare-headed, or next to a fan, or perhaps even beside a river, but beyond that I don’t think the technology is there.

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

#58
post #27
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…

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

We also did this for my mom, but keep in mind this is a bit of a crutch that may keep them even more from getting a real hearing aid. My mom later had to go to the hospital, and because of battery life and other problems we regretted not pushing for a real hearing aid earlier. This caused real problems in the hospital.

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

#59

This is very unrelated but I worry about posts like these. HN is a great place to get genuine thoughtful discussions compared to a big portion of the rest of the internet. Reddit used to be the place for finding genuine experiences for products with subreddits like buyitforlife (or more specific) but now these and other subreddits are filled with bots and marketeers promoting what they sell and hammering their compet…

If you spot one flag it and mail hn@ycombinator.com , Dan & Tom usually act pretty quickly on confirmed shills. But don't comment in the threads to accuse someone of being a shill, that's explicitly against the guidelines, and that's because it isn't rare for people to simply get it wrong, besides it would pollute the threads.

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

#60

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…

Have a look at librepods [1], which was lately on HN.

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1. https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods

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