3 ms·

A lot of the time it's not absolute volume. If you can't hear certain frequency ranges well, boosting the volume of all ranges is just going to drown out the on

A lot of the time it's not absolute volume. If you can't hear certain frequency ranges well, boosting the volume of all ranges is just going to drown out the ones you can't hear well.

EastOfTruth 5y ago
so a smart volume button
- phkahler 5y ago
  That pays attention to the environment and changes the volume (part of the spectrum perhaps?) that is what you're likely to be listening to. This is of course a huge oversimplification, and aiming for it is probably what the industry is doing.
  - jrace 5y ago
    That is exactly what the tech does, automatically adjusts based on the amount of noise and speech in the environment. And going a step further, applying directional microphone control to better pick up sounds where the speech is.
neffy 5y ago
Exactly - hearing is much more complicated than just noise sensitivity. For example, a somewhat underdiagnosed problems is issue with the frequency bins that the brain segments sound into for recognition deteriorating. Symptoms are - can hear just fine in a nice, uncluttered audio environment, say a test centre, but has issues if there is any significant background noise.
- Swizec 5y ago
  > Symptoms are - can hear just fine in a nice, uncluttered audio environment, say a test centre, but has issues if there is any significant background noise. Also a problem if you're not a native speaker. I am fluent in English and have been able to watch movies without subtitles for 20 years at least, probably more. But put me in a noisy bar and my error correction suffers a lot. Suddenly it's hard to follow a conversation that in my native language would be effortless. The worst situation is listening to a loud video on bad speakers. Doesn't matter how much you crank the volume, people are hard to understand because the brain's error correction isn't good enough. Use a good speaker and turn down the volume, suddenly it's perfect.
robocat 5y ago
Do any hearing aids frequency shift, or compress the frequency scale (e.g. just higher frequencies compressed down to lower frequencies so that voice tone stays constant and sibilants get shifted down into hearing range).
- jrace 5y ago
  yes, I know Phonak hearing aids were doing that since about 2012. For some of our more severe hearing impaired patients it was a noticeable improvement in speech comprehension.

A lot of the time it's not absolute volume. If you can't hear certain frequency ranges well, boosting the volume of all ranges is just going to drown out the ones you can't hear well.

EastOfTruth 5y ago

so a smart volume button

phkahler 5y ago
That pays attention to the environment and changes the volume (part of the spectrum perhaps?) that is what you're likely to be listening to. This is of course a huge oversimplification, and aiming for it is probably what the industry is doing.
- jrace 5y ago
  That is exactly what the tech does, automatically adjusts based on the amount of noise and speech in the environment. And going a step further, applying directional microphone control to better pick up sounds where the speech is.

neffy 5y ago

Exactly - hearing is much more complicated than just noise sensitivity. For example, a somewhat underdiagnosed problems is issue with the frequency bins that the brain segments sound into for recognition deteriorating. Symptoms are - can hear just fine in a nice, uncluttered audio environment, say a test centre, but has issues if there is any significant background noise.

Swizec 5y ago
> Symptoms are - can hear just fine in a nice, uncluttered audio environment, say a test centre, but has issues if there is any significant background noise. Also a problem if you're not a native speaker. I am fluent in English and have been able to watch movies without subtitles for 20 years at least, probably more. But put me in a noisy bar and my error correction suffers a lot. Suddenly it's hard to follow a conversation that in my native language would be effortless. The worst situation is listening to a loud video on bad speakers. Doesn't matter how much you crank the volume, people are hard to understand because the brain's error correction isn't good enough. Use a good speaker and turn down the volume, suddenly it's perfect.

robocat 5y ago

Do any hearing aids frequency shift, or compress the frequency scale (e.g. just higher frequencies compressed down to lower frequencies so that voice tone stays constant and sibilants get shifted down into hearing range).

jrace 5y ago
yes, I know Phonak hearing aids were doing that since about 2012. For some of our more severe hearing impaired patients it was a noticeable improvement in speech comprehension.