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The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

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Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#421

Post by RHSeeger »

crucialfelix wrote: post #402
tdeck wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This honestly doesn't sound very empathetic toward patients. Many of these people had fine hearing and then lost it. They've already "learned" how to hear and they reasonably expect the hearing aid to help restore it. In your analogy, it would be like if my vision got worse and I got eyeglasses which partially restored it, but mirrored everything upside down with tons of static. Now I've got to learn to read upside d…

I got high quality progressive eyeglasses some years ago. Hated it at first. It was like swimming in a fish bowl. If you don't position your head correctly things are blurry. Now it's completely natural and I love them. I had to learn. Hearing aids are the exact same. It's slightly unnatural but once you learn how to use the tool, it's a super power. I can hear conversations in crowded bars when normal people can't.…

The thing is, though, that it appears to be very different depending on the person. And there seems to be a LOT of cases where the technology just isn't up to the task. Sure, we _can_ blame the user in every case, but if the cases are highly skewed to the users have a poor experience / not hearing well with them, then really it makes more sense to blame the technology until you have proof otherwise.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#422

Post by jleyank »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #376
jleyank wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2+ microphones, signal processing chip, audiophile+ miniature speaker, multi-octave equalizer, intercommunication between ears/dynamic adjustment, multiple profile, remote mic, bluetooth to phone. I think the top-end in-ear musician speakers are comparable, certainly in terms of sound quality. Maybe better as they have (far) more speakers/frequency response as their users are far more critical. They're not magical bu…

How does the actual hardware compare to a $180 pair of AirPods? I wonder if basically Apple and Samsung should be making these instead of smaller medical device companies.

I suspect there’s nowhere enough money for apple or Samsung to enter the medical devices field for real. I would think the headphones have a Bluetooth receiver, a d/a converter and a speaker. They rely on the associated device to handle “adjustments”. Might be noise reduceing, but that only adds a mic and a phase inverter. Much simpler device. Getting medical approval takes time and $$… Easier to put fine print that the things does not treat or cure anything.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#423

Post by retrac »

FPGAhacker wrote: post #354
dmurray wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought the problem with hearing aids is the calibration process. People (often old, confused, and less tech-familiar) try them on and spend half an hour answering questions about "does that sound better?" 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. Let them have this for a month, let them try it…

There are actually a good reasons not to do this. A very large part of your hearing is brain training...your brain learning how to interpret the new stimulus it is getting. You need to give your brain time to adapt to new stimulus before evaluating whether you are hearing better or not. If you are constantly fiddling with your hearing aids, you never get the benefit of training. This may not apply if your hearing los…

Yes! Modern hearing aids do some fancy processing to shift frequencies into the more audible range of the patient. Many people do not have a simple "not enough volume" hearing loss. Personally, it's like someone went and messed with all the settings on the audio equalizer, and then added some muffling to make sharp sounds less distinct.

When programmed properly, I find my hearing aids on their various speech modes to sound distinctly artificial and processed. I imagine it would be jarring to the uninitiated. Like a good speech codec or vocoder. It's unlike anything else.

But having grown up with DSP hearing aids doing this all my life, I find speech coming through them very comprehensible, often shockingly so compared to my normal hearing -- even with other amplification like regular headphones. I do dislike my hearing aids for music, though, even on the normal or music settings.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#425

Post by bookofjoe »

babyshake wrote: post #374
t_serpico wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. They're primed for this.

I'd think that even if turned off, Airpods and similar devices act as decent earplugs in a pinch.

When I'm outside running on sidewalks along city streets, music via AirPods Pro with Noise Cancellation turned on sounds a bit better BUT I prefer to keep this feature turned off in favor of being able to hear ambient cars etc.

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#426

Post by jessaustin »

jrace wrote: post #177
dmurray wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long thought the problem with hearing aids is the calibration process. People (often old, confused, and less tech-familiar) try them on and spend half an hour answering questions about "does that sound better?" 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. Let them have this for a month, let them try it…

THere may be now, but not 5 years ago. I have many ideas about how the industry can be improved, especially with the use of a smart phone app and user interactions. Not only is it plausible, but would make the clinicians (fitter) job easier and lead to far more hearing aid sales.

...especially with the use of a smart phone app...

Based on my observations of my father's struggles with various hearing aids, hearing aid smartphone apps are just as terrible as any other apps developed by hardware manufacturers. Don't expect the "clinicians" to help with this aspect either, because they were trained on a previous version of a different app and how could they be expected to figure out the apps that are used now?

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#427

Post by bookofjoe »

jrace wrote: post #227
germinalphrase wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ Sadly, most people wait too long before trying a hearing aid, and give up because they hear too much noise.” Are you suggesting that getting hearing aids preserves your hearing or simply that people with advanced hearing loss benefit less from them?

Hearing aids allow you - rather enable you - to listen again. Without them your understanding and comprehension gets lazy. Imagine if you stopped playing basketball because of a bad knee. Then years later you get a knee brace and are able to play again. How long, and how much practice would you need before you could play at the level you were at before the knee problem? And without properly fixing the problem (just u…

OT but knee-related: people need to understand that function after a total knee replacement will NEVER be better than that existing at the time of the replacement. The only benefit is reduction or elimination of pain. — retired M.D. (anesthesiologist)

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#428

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #61
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t buy online because I want to see how they look on my face first. Many shops won’t sell you glasses unless your prescription is under 1 year old. This allows them to charge you for an exam when you don’t necessarily need it.

Some of the online shops now actually allow you to upload a selfie, and they'll composite your chosen frames onto your face. Probably not quite as good as a live view, but not bad.

What about the privacy issues of sending them my face for them to keep in a database forever?

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#429

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

handrous wrote: post #203
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t buy online because I want to see how they look on my face first. Many shops won’t sell you glasses unless your prescription is under 1 year old. This allows them to charge you for an exam when you don’t necessarily need it.

Lots of Zenni frames are so cheap that it's non-crazy to just order like 3 pair you think might work, and keep the two you like the least as backups, wearing the one that looked best. They also have "see it on your face" tech that's... OK, for narrowing it down. Better than nothing, and better than looking at them on a model.

What about the privacy issues of sending them my face for them to keep in a database forever?

Re: The FDA wants you to be able to buy a hearing aid without a prescription

#430

Post by some_random »

gpt5 wrote: post #244

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…

>This trend would make hearing aids not just target hearing impaired people, but also individual with normal hearing. For example, features such as protecting your ears against a sudden loud noise, silencing a loud restaurant so you can have a quiet conversation or improving the audio of a soft speaker could be useful for everyone.

Amusingly this already exists, there are a bunch of ear muffs (and some in ear equivalents I think) that relay sounds from outside in that cut off when a threshold is reached. They're pretty much exclusively sold for use with firearms, I'd love to see them developed more to work better in a setting other than the woods and shooting range.

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