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$1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

sciencemag.org

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Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#191

Post by mdw »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #95
mdw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a brightly coloured hearing aid as an adult doesn’t look professional. Are these marketed towards younger people?

Why not? People wear brightly colored jewelry or “statement” eyewear in a professional context all the time. Are you saying that it’s “professional” to hide your disability if you have hearing loss? If so, then I strongly disagree. It’s a personal choice.

I didn’t mean it to be about ‘hiding’ your disability. I wear glasses and I would never wear brightly coloured rims in a professional environment. By my own standards, in a work place you stand out by the merits of your work, not on what you’re wearing.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#192

Post by jbarham »

gugagore wrote: post #190
jbarham wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After my cochlear implant operation I volunteered to participate in an in-depth research study to collect data on post-op outcomes for cochlear implant recipients (coincidentally at the Eye & Ear hospital in Melbourne where the multi-channel cochlear implant was invented and first implanted in 1978 by Graeme Clark). I did a whole raft of audiology tests and for the speech comprehension tests in particular I scored 90…

Thanks for sharing. This is getting into territory that non-musically trained hearing people would probably have difficultly, but can you distinguish between a C major chord and a C minor chord? And do you have any other feelings about it, like one sounding sad or happy? I don't think any of this is particularly relevant to understanding spoken language, but I'm just curious about your outcome. I'd be surprised if a…

Yes, I can distinguish between a C major chord and a C minor chord. I took piano lessons as a kid and learned some formal music theory.

Note though that I had perfectly normal hearing until my late 30s, and only have an implant in one ear. After my implant operation my brain "knew" what it should be hearing from the implant signal. This is apparently true of many adult CI recipients and the unexpected plasticity of adult brains to adjust to the CI signal is an active area of research.

I think that the typical outcomes for people who have cochlear implants when they are born deaf would be quite different to adult recipients like me who grew up with normal hearing.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#193

Post by danbmil99 »

phkahler wrote: post #180
SeasonalEnnui wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple-decades of hearing aid wearing here. I agree with most of that. I ended up buying the programmer for my aids to do small tweaks (not the prescription/audiogram, just the program configuration where you can edit the level of DSP in various situations). I would say that this latest generation of hearing aids (Phonak Marvel) is the first generation where I've felt like they've got it right. Direct bluetooth con…

This may be a dumb question, but could a phone app work for a good number of people? Not sure off hand how not to amplify your own voice, but otherwise a phone can easily do the DSP work can use wired or bluetooth headphones.

I suspect the main issue is latency

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#194

Post by danbmil99 »

panabee wrote: post #182
emcq wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

thanks for sharing! what’s considered the lower bound for comfortable latency?

In audio a delay of about 5 milliseconds is the most you can comfortably accept without it seeming really annoying.

Well-designed, expensive hearing aids have extremely low latency, but there are theoretical limit. The more frequency domain processing you want to do, the more samples you need to do it, and the more delay you're going to have even in the best-case engineering.

Smartphones are unfortunately typically not able to meet these kind of specifications. Much longer delays are acceptable in voice communication because you don't hear your own voice and the delayed voice at the same time.

Point being, it really has to be a specialized device designed from the ground up to keep the latency close to the theoretical low limit.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#195

Post by subhashp »

jaclaz wrote: post #40
subhashp wrote: post #24

My mother has been wearing Hearing Aids for over 20 years. These days she has trouble with hearing what is on TV even with a powerful hearing aid. Most times she just sits quietly in front of the TV watching moving pictures. I have always wondered why it is so difficult to make hearing aid which can be connected to a bluetooth enabled TV or Mobile phone, so senior citizens can watch TV or talk to their loved one. Wha…

Well, my mom has one of those. They are actually two pieces, one is a match-box sized thingy that can connect to Bluetooth devices and that she wears around her neck that transmits to the devices in her ears and also has a microphone, it is very handy as she can easily answer the phone by pressing a button on it (leaving the telephone in the bag, it works as hand-free) and it also has two buttons that can regulate th…

Thank you for giving a detailed explanation. I have got a general idea. I wish you could share photos, so I can replicate it for my Mom.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#196

Post by PedroBatista »

whjohnson37 wrote: post #183
wefarrell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cochlear implants do not "restore hearing" but they do allow people who are completely deaf to sense sound well enough to understand speech. That's a huge change in a deaf person's life.

Cochlear implant user here - they completely changed the arc of my life. I lost my hearing when I was 12 and was deaf for 15 years, so I do have some sense of what normal hearing is like. Sound quality is pretty good in the speech-level frequencies but degrades when you move away from that range (music sounds worse than I remember). That being said, I score in the 90%+ percentile for speech recognition and am able to…

Music sounds worse today even for people with perfect hearing.. :)

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#197

Post by PedroBatista »

mdw wrote: post #191
libraryofbabel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? People wear brightly colored jewelry or “statement” eyewear in a professional context all the time. Are you saying that it’s “professional” to hide your disability if you have hearing loss? If so, then I strongly disagree. It’s a personal choice.

I didn’t mean it to be about ‘hiding’ your disability. I wear glasses and I would never wear brightly coloured rims in a professional environment. By my own standards, in a work place you stand out by the merits of your work, not on what you’re wearing.

Dude... chill.

Even if you can be “right” you’ll be alone on Merit Island, let it go it doesn’t matter have some fun and let others have their “things” too.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#198

Post by jaclaz »

subhashp wrote: post #195
jaclaz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my mom has one of those. They are actually two pieces, one is a match-box sized thingy that can connect to Bluetooth devices and that she wears around her neck that transmits to the devices in her ears and also has a microphone, it is very handy as she can easily answer the phone by pressing a button on it (leaving the telephone in the bag, it works as hand-free) and it also has two buttons that can regulate th…

Thank you for giving a detailed explanation. I have got a general idea. I wish you could share photos, so I can replicate it for my Mom.

The issue is the wireless protocol used by the hearing aids (which I believe it is proprietary).

The TV box thingy is like a "normal" Bluetooth transmitter for a TV, the only differences are that my mom's one has direct RCA and optical instead of an audio jack and a blue led to show it is powered and a brightish orange one to show if the connection is active, here it is:

https://www.hab.online/product/oticon-connectline-tv/

The neck thingy is this one: https://www.hab.online/product/oticon-streamer-pro/

The above (UK) site seems to have all versions of these thingies, here:

https://www.hab.online/product-category/wireless-and-remotes...

The alternative:

https://www.hab.online/product/oticon-connectclip/

we tried but it is too small for my mom to use comfortably.

Here is the manual of the streamer, with more details:

https://www.oticon.com/-/media/oticon-us/main/download-cente...

Check also this:

https://www.ndcs.org.uk/information-and-support/technology-f...

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#199

Post by cedricd »

brento wrote: post #18

I was told I could benefit from hearing aids, but was told they would cost $5K to $8K depending on which ones I wanted. I've decided for now that I'll put up with the issues associated with not having them for now. I was also told they blue tooth doesn't work very well if you have an android phone, so I'm hoping that there can be some real innovation and competition in this space to drive the prices down and also imp…

Have you seen https://www.listenlively.com/ They're a fair bit below what you've quoted above.

Re: $1 hearing aid could treat millions with hearing loss

#200

Post by subhashp »

jaclaz wrote: post #198
subhashp wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for giving a detailed explanation. I have got a general idea. I wish you could share photos, so I can replicate it for my Mom.

The issue is the wireless protocol used by the hearing aids (which I believe it is proprietary). The TV box thingy is like a "normal" Bluetooth transmitter for a TV, the only differences are that my mom's one has direct RCA and optical instead of an audio jack and a blue led to show it is powered and a brightish orange one to show if the connection is active, here it is: https://www.hab.online/product/oticon-connectl…

Thank you, friend!
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