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Ask HN: Why don't smartphones tell users with poor hearing to get hearing aids?

3 points by amichail 4y ago

It should be easy to tell whether someone needs a hearing aid from their volume setting and ambient noise.

jleyank 4y ago
Hearing aids are expensive. I read back then that the first iPhones were capable of lots of volume cuz Jobs had lost hearing. Germany had a limiter I thought. Cheaper to crank the volume. Or, just get their (grand)kids to stop whispering all the time /s.
- amichail 4y ago
  Maybe expensive smartphones could do this. If you can afford one, you can probably afford a hearing aid.
  - jleyank 4y ago
    Assume 1-2k usd per ear as a starting point for digital aids and (at least in the us) they’re not covered by insurance. They can be finessed by HSA if they’re still active or written off with taxes subject to the 7% agi rule. For most people, that’s something they’d rather not spend disposable income on - saying “what?” Is cheaper. Also, while people seem quite willing to wear glasses to correct their vision, it seems people are (far?) less willing to wear aids. Perhaps it makes the world too loud, or it’s a hassle feeling like somebody has their fingers in your ears all the time. Damned things itch sometimes. But 85-90% of the time they make the world liveable.
    - ksaj 4y ago
      I very often don't wear my hearing aids for that very reason. I have most of my hearing in one side, so I can get by. The world is a loud place, and hearing not-nice things more clearly isn't much fun. So I only use my hearing aids when I know I'll be where I need to hear conversations in a crowd or whatever. Most people have no idea my hearing is so bad, unless they are walking on the wrong side while trying to carry a conversation. Mine were a bit over $1500 each, so your pricing is pretty much correct. Also, to address something said earlier in the thread, modern hearing aids control more than 8 frequency bands, and the improvement is quite noticeable. Some people have fairly "wide" hearing loss, but for most people it is very specific frequencies, and variable frequency width (q) is the difference between good audio and great audio hearing.
      - amichail 4y ago
        Why doesn't the computer inside the hearing aid make sure not to make the world a loud place? Maybe it should focus on speech (and even then there would be a limit to how loud speech can get)?
        jleyank 4y ago
        They do, at least the higher end digital ones. But the dsp’s aren’t all knowing and some sounds get jacked when I would have thought not. Restaurants w/o sound dampening are brutal and when a child lets go, on man…
        ksaj 4y ago
        Pretty much this. Modern hearing aids have settings for different environments. But none of them are perfect, and nobody likes to be constantly switching programs. Speech in Noise is the setting that probably fits for the most part. But it isn't pleasant in other environments, and horrendous around road noise. Mine really glom onto the sound of tires on the road if I forget to change the settings on the way out the door. It is funny sometimes that you'll catch snippets of female voices across the road or in passing cars so clearly they might as well be right behind you. The settings for music are the best when it comes to full frequency representation, at the expense of everything else in the environment sounding too extreme. It does sound amazing when on a nature walk, except things like rippling water take on a movie audio quality where it sounds like it was overdubbed. All shrill and hissy sounds (babies crying, sirens, etc) are overwhelming at any configuration. Although I shut mine off in transit if a baby is crying and sometimes joke "Baby, what baby?" (even though I can actually still hear it without my hearing aids) Also, environments with heavy echo/reverb are seriously annoying. There are settings to cancel that out, too, but again, it's a setting you never want on all the time, because it affects far too many other sounds, too.
h2odragon 4y ago
That would be offering medical advice, and recommend a specific treatment. The FDA crawls up people and companies who do that without their permission. Why can't smartphones be louder for those people? put it behind a "enable full audio range" setting to prevent accidental activation if you like.
- amichail 4y ago
  Hearing sensitivity often varies with sound frequency. So just increasing the volume wouldn't address different frequencies differently like hearing aids do.
  - h2odragon 4y ago
    I can imagine a "can you hear this?" calibration app quite easily. AFAIK even full on high end hearing aids only do an 8 band or so EQ curve.
    - amichail 4y ago
      Wouldn't that turn the phone into a medical device, which is arguably worse without FDA (or equivalent agency) approval than telling people to get a hearing aid?
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
People with hearing problems know they have hearing problems. I bet their spouses tell them all the time. Its a vanity/pride thing. When bluetooth ear pieces were the thing some years back it looked less odd. I know someone that had a noise cancelling one and it just looked like someone that wore it to take an occasional call or whatever. If someone is walking around with air pods or the like in their ears you’d assume they are listening to music/podcast and it would be odd socially for someone to wear them out to a dinner party.
- ksaj 4y ago
  This is not always true. I'm mostly deaf in one ear. But I only noticed one time when I was showering at the gym. It was caused by a slow-growing tumor in my middle ear. The surgeon said that my hearing would have been getting progressively worse over a fairly lengthy period of time. I only noticed suddenly, because of that shower. When you have two ears, it is surprising how much the other one can compensate before you realize at all.

3 points by amichail 4y ago

It should be easy to tell whether someone needs a hearing aid from their volume setting and ambient noise.

Hearing aids are expensive. I read back then that the first iPhones were capable of lots of volume cuz Jobs had lost hearing. Germany had a limiter I thought. Cheaper to crank the volume. Or, just get their (grand)kids to stop whispering all the time /s.

amichail 4y ago
Maybe expensive smartphones could do this. If you can afford one, you can probably afford a hearing aid.
- jleyank 4y ago
  Assume 1-2k usd per ear as a starting point for digital aids and (at least in the us) they’re not covered by insurance. They can be finessed by HSA if they’re still active or written off with taxes subject to the 7% agi rule. For most people, that’s something they’d rather not spend disposable income on - saying “what?” Is cheaper. Also, while people seem quite willing to wear glasses to correct their vision, it seems people are (far?) less willing to wear aids. Perhaps it makes the world too loud, or it’s a hassle feeling like somebody has their fingers in your ears all the time. Damned things itch sometimes. But 85-90% of the time they make the world liveable.
  - ksaj 4y ago
    I very often don't wear my hearing aids for that very reason. I have most of my hearing in one side, so I can get by. The world is a loud place, and hearing not-nice things more clearly isn't much fun. So I only use my hearing aids when I know I'll be where I need to hear conversations in a crowd or whatever. Most people have no idea my hearing is so bad, unless they are walking on the wrong side while trying to carry a conversation. Mine were a bit over $1500 each, so your pricing is pretty much correct. Also, to address something said earlier in the thread, modern hearing aids control more than 8 frequency bands, and the improvement is quite noticeable. Some people have fairly "wide" hearing loss, but for most people it is very specific frequencies, and variable frequency width (q) is the difference between good audio and great audio hearing.
    - amichail 4y ago
      Why doesn't the computer inside the hearing aid make sure not to make the world a loud place? Maybe it should focus on speech (and even then there would be a limit to how loud speech can get)?
      - jleyank 4y ago
        They do, at least the higher end digital ones. But the dsp’s aren’t all knowing and some sounds get jacked when I would have thought not. Restaurants w/o sound dampening are brutal and when a child lets go, on man…
        ksaj 4y ago
        Pretty much this. Modern hearing aids have settings for different environments. But none of them are perfect, and nobody likes to be constantly switching programs. Speech in Noise is the setting that probably fits for the most part. But it isn't pleasant in other environments, and horrendous around road noise. Mine really glom onto the sound of tires on the road if I forget to change the settings on the way out the door. It is funny sometimes that you'll catch snippets of female voices across the road or in passing cars so clearly they might as well be right behind you. The settings for music are the best when it comes to full frequency representation, at the expense of everything else in the environment sounding too extreme. It does sound amazing when on a nature walk, except things like rippling water take on a movie audio quality where it sounds like it was overdubbed. All shrill and hissy sounds (babies crying, sirens, etc) are overwhelming at any configuration. Although I shut mine off in transit if a baby is crying and sometimes joke "Baby, what baby?" (even though I can actually still hear it without my hearing aids) Also, environments with heavy echo/reverb are seriously annoying. There are settings to cancel that out, too, but again, it's a setting you never want on all the time, because it affects far too many other sounds, too.

h2odragon 4y ago

That would be offering medical advice, and recommend a specific treatment. The FDA crawls up people and companies who do that without their permission. Why can't smartphones be louder for those people? put it behind a "enable full audio range" setting to prevent accidental activation if you like.

amichail 4y ago
Hearing sensitivity often varies with sound frequency. So just increasing the volume wouldn't address different frequencies differently like hearing aids do.
- h2odragon 4y ago
  I can imagine a "can you hear this?" calibration app quite easily. AFAIK even full on high end hearing aids only do an 8 band or so EQ curve.
  - amichail 4y ago
    Wouldn't that turn the phone into a medical device, which is arguably worse without FDA (or equivalent agency) approval than telling people to get a hearing aid?

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago

People with hearing problems know they have hearing problems. I bet their spouses tell them all the time. Its a vanity/pride thing. When bluetooth ear pieces were the thing some years back it looked less odd. I know someone that had a noise cancelling one and it just looked like someone that wore it to take an occasional call or whatever. If someone is walking around with air pods or the like in their ears you’d assume they are listening to music/podcast and it would be odd socially for someone to wear them out to a dinner party.

ksaj 4y ago
This is not always true. I'm mostly deaf in one ear. But I only noticed one time when I was showering at the gym. It was caused by a slow-growing tumor in my middle ear. The surgeon said that my hearing would have been getting progressively worse over a fairly lengthy period of time. I only noticed suddenly, because of that shower. When you have two ears, it is surprising how much the other one can compensate before you realize at all.