OT - airpods as hearing aids

[Doc B.]

I'm going to commit an audiophile heresey and admit that my once golden ears are not what they used to be. After getting my cataract ridden lenses replaced last year (now 20/10 with glasses), getting a bunch of dental work done this year (amazing how much more energy I have after that) and getting a few shots in arthritic finger and thumb so I can keep packing little parts in plastic bags and turn wrenches I am pretty much fully giving in to the restoration process. The regain in quality of life is pretty amazing.

I have been aware of a slow but steady decline in my hearing for around 10 years. Spent a lot of effort trying to get doctors to do something, but the attitude is pretty much that they only treat mid to extreme loss. So my being unhappy with hearing loss above 10kHz ten years ago was not on the radar. Nowadays that loss has gotten greater and at lower frequencies. I have measured it and do compensate my audio system for the loss when I listen alone. But I have now hit the point where I'm struggling in noisy restaurants and such.

Enter Airpods pro 2 with rather sophisticated hearing aid tech built in. Pretty amazing cheap hearing aids!  You run a hearing test with an app called Mimi and load that into Apple health, where the Airpods can use the data to compensate the levels. Transparency mode lets you use the Airpods as hearing aids. For $200 this is pretty amazing tech. If your hearing is getting a little shabby I highly recommend giving this setup a try. I'm sure dedicated hearing aids have better battery life and are probably more comfortable for long sessions, but this has been a pretty impressive intro into what is possible these days.

[hmbscott]

I'm im the same boat hearing wise. I also bought airpods recently for this very reason.

[dth31]

Doc said, “ Enter Airpods pro 2 with rather sophisticated hearing aid tech built in. Pretty amazing cheap hearing aids! “

My thought that the AirPods worked only on what was streamed to them but weren’t hearing aids in the sense that they don’t augment hearing say in a restaurant, church, etc. If that is not correct please let me know. I’m in the same boat as you and also have tinnitus accompanying my hearing loss.

[hmbscott]

It's a newly announced feature of the airpod pro https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/hearing-health/

[Doc B.]

Tried them last night in a mildly noisy restaurant with background music playing. They were OK but I wasn't amazed. They clarified Eileen's voice but the boosted background music was rather intrusive. It could just be that I need to learn how to use them and/or train my brain. Need to try them in a few different scenarios.

[Larpy]

As someone who recently took the plunge into wearing hearing aids, I can report that the better ones use different programs for different hearing contexts.  By all accounts, hearing well in a noisy restaurant is the toughest challenge for hearing aids.  I'm unfamiliar with the new Air Pods, but if what they do is to use an audiogram of your hearing to boost the needed frequencies, they won't be terribly effective in noisy situations like a busy restaurant.  Hearing aids use all sorts of technology to improve hearing in that context, from changing compression ratios to redistributing higher frequencies to lower frequencies to changing mic directionality.

Hearing aids are notoriously bad for what matters most to us audiophiles: listening to music.  All the attention has been paid to speech recognition.  Audiologists don't even measure hearing above 8K Hz.  You pay extra (indeed, handsomely, in my case) to get hearing aids that go to 10K Hz.  (Less expensive hearing aids only go as high as 4K or 6K Hz.)  Ironically, what characterizes a hearing aid's  "music" program is the disabling of all the tech tricks I described in the previous paragraph.

So if $200 buys you greater pleasure listening to music, that's a screaming bargain.  And if later generations of Air Buds incorporate more technology borrowed from dedicated hearing aids to address noisy environments like restaurants, things could get really interesting.  From what I can tell, prescription hearing aids are sold at margins that would make even some boutique cable making companies blush.  A shake up from new products like the new Air Pods is overdue.

On the other hand, one thing I've learned researching hearing aid technology is that hearing aids are only as good as the person who sets them up/programs them.  Hearing aid forums are rife with complaints from people who spent thousands of dollars and yet hate their hearing aids.  Everybody hears differently, and a good audiologist will work with you to adjust the programming to your satisfaction.  Musicians and audiophiles are notorious for putting audiologists through their paces.

[Gerry E.]

Hi - I thought I would add another data-point for anybody in a similar situation. 

Over the last 5 years or so, it appeared that my hearing was slowly deteriorating.  Not so much listening to music but during normal conversation and watching TV.  Inspired by my sister-in-law who recently got hearing aids, we were with her for over an hour and never noticed them until she showed us, I made an appointment for a hearing test.  It just happened to be this past Thursday.

This may have been my first hearing test since the 6th grade over 50 years ago.  I was sure that the doctor was going to tell me that I needed hearing aids.  The test frequencies are from 250Hz to 8000Hz.  Using 0dB as a reference, they measure hearing loss at different frequencies.  Only when you have a number of -25 to -30dB (or more) test frequencies do they recommend hearing aids.

I was VERY pleasantly surprised to find out that I was a consistent -20dB across the test spectrum except for a couple of frequencies that were -25dB.  The takeaway was that I did not need hearing aids yet but now they have a baseline to compare to hearing tests in the future.

Gerry