4 ms·

A family member is always complaining that her hearing aids are crap, noisy, harsh and yet, not allowing her to actually hear very well.. Shes had them readjust

by dusted 3y ago

A family member is always complaining that her hearing aids are crap, noisy, harsh and yet, not allowing her to actually hear very well.. Shes had them readjusted multiple times with no improvement. I tried putting some Beyer-dynamics 990 Pro 80 Ohm on her, and then plugging that into the line-out of a hand-held zoom recorder with the sensitivity turned up. She heard _EVERYTHING_ and she told that the sound was pleasant too.. This leaves me with the impression that hearing aids are way behind off-the-shelf consumer parts.. Maybe too much sound quality (you had ONE job!) is being sacrificed for size ?

rawland 3y ago
Yes. Size (= compute+battery limitation) and the ear also being a somewhat hostile environment for electronics. PS: Is that zoom recorder able to "beamform" (~= directional mics / mic modes inside?)
- dusted 3y ago
  It's a two-track recorder, the "h1", so it has two microphones in there, with pretty good stereo imaging, I don't know about the directionality, it seems to pick up all around, but probably more in the human voice range. It really got me thinking, in a lot of situations, what would people prefer ? If the aids just looked like normal large cups, then you're just looking like a music freak.. I'd go for that any day, rather than having uncomfortable in-ears which aren't even working as well. There ought to be a product like that.. build some directional mics discreetly into some large cups along with amp circuit and batteries..
sdflhasjd 3y ago
I suspect battery life is a big one. Airpods are what, 3-5 hours? Hearing aids can last a few days.
nikau 3y ago
Sounds like she had either very low end hearing aids or they were poorly tuned. High end hearing aids don't just do band tuned amplification, they also filter out repeating noises like a fridge hum, and the left & right share microphone data with very low latency to isolate voices in noisy environments.

by dusted 3y ago

rawland 3y ago

Yes. Size (= compute+battery limitation) and the ear also being a somewhat hostile environment for electronics. PS: Is that zoom recorder able to "beamform" (~= directional mics / mic modes inside?)

dusted 3y ago
It's a two-track recorder, the "h1", so it has two microphones in there, with pretty good stereo imaging, I don't know about the directionality, it seems to pick up all around, but probably more in the human voice range. It really got me thinking, in a lot of situations, what would people prefer ? If the aids just looked like normal large cups, then you're just looking like a music freak.. I'd go for that any day, rather than having uncomfortable in-ears which aren't even working as well. There ought to be a product like that.. build some directional mics discreetly into some large cups along with amp circuit and batteries..

sdflhasjd 3y ago

I suspect battery life is a big one. Airpods are what, 3-5 hours? Hearing aids can last a few days.

nikau 3y ago

Sounds like she had either very low end hearing aids or they were poorly tuned. High end hearing aids don't just do band tuned amplification, they also filter out repeating noises like a fridge hum, and the left & right share microphone data with very low latency to isolate voices in noisy environments.