6 ms·

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even fo

One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are. go and look the up the price, they are deeply expensive, even for basic "make it louder" type aids. Worse still, because they interfere with your ear, you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing. This means that you can't tune out other conversations/noises or stuff. The one good side effect of facebook spending billions on its (probably) futile search for practical and popular AR is https://www.projectaria.com/glasses/ https://www.projectaria.com/glasses/ Which is a (cheap) platform to do experimentation for AR type actions. However it has eye tracking, microphone array and front facing cameras, so it can be fairly easily modified into being a steerable microphone.

wazoox 2y ago
The French youtuber Deus Ex silicium made a through analysis. Basically, hearing aids are slightly worse than ordinary wireless headphones, but 10 times more expensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPmwfbLPHG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPmwfbLPHG8
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  I doubt that is true. The hearing aids sold as medical devices, have to satisfy regulatory standards. So a lot of incentive to use older reliable tech. Not to mention, it probably takes a couple of years to get the certification for a device. So, any device to market is easily 2-3 years old tech by definition.
  - eequah9L 2y ago
    I think you meant "I don't doubt"? Because none of what you said sounds like a counterargument to what the parent said.
  - datpiff 2y ago
    > Not to mention, it probably takes a couple of years to get the certification for a device. So, any device to market is easily 2-3 years old tech by definition. Approval can be quicker for hearing aids as there are already works-alike devices on the market. 510(k) clearance takes less than 6 months.
- PoignardAzur 2y ago
  From what the video says, it sounds like you could get a much better price by buying the devices directly from the constructor, even without the healthcare subsidies. But doing so means you need to calibrate them yourself. I wonder if some constructors could target this use-case by making aids that are very easy to self-calibrate. On the other hand, the median hearing aid user is pretty old, has lots of disposable money and has never watched a youtube tutorial in their life, so it might be a small market.
rock_artist 2y ago
Yep. My grandma (may she rest in peace) had all those. I've actually thought of doing something like they did when she was alive and I've tried communicating with her at family events or in-public. I guess they're expensive because of relations with medical / health companies being complaint makes things expensive (eg. the same display but with certification to use in a medical facility would cost many times more).
- angra_mainyu 2y ago
  I recall being a student in the biomedical electronics/biomedical devices lab and was curious about one piece of equipment that cost about ~10k EUR. The device is relatively simple to make so I asked my teacher why were they so expensive. He said that yeah, the engineering/manufacturing side of it is about 200 EUR, the remaining 9.8k EUR is spent on certifications/paperwork. Obviously, wages factor into this but over time I've come to see how paperwork and paying lawyers do in fact account for the majority of the cost.
andrelaszlo 2y ago
Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth. My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion app. I can function and even have conversations to some extent in noisy environments, something that would have been impossible for me with hearing aids from a decade or so ago. I'm very grateful for this of course. The pair costs roughly $2000. Luckily, it's covered by the national healthcare system[0] (which I of course pay for through my taxes) so I end up paying $50 every five years or so. I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to not just amplify and filter (even if it's in very clever ways) but to isolate and enhance/reconstruct voices in noisy environments. Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss.[1] 0: https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/en/about-us/healthcare-for-visitors-to-sweden/about-the-swedish-healthcare-system/ https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/en/about-us/healthcare-for-vi... 1: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17168504/restaurants-noise-levels-loud-decibels https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17168504/restaurants-noise-lev...
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  Those do look good, and in the last 3 years the price has dropped significantly. in the uk those cost about $3k, so not much difference. alas, they are not covered by the health service, only lesser ones.
- unsupp0rted 2y ago
  > I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to not just amplify and filter (even if it's in very clever ways) but to isolate and enhance/reconstruct voices in noisy environments. I often see AI hopes expressed in this format. I would put it another way: > I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to restore hearing to baseline average human level Wishful thinking would be to enhance it beyond baseline. It's perfectly reasonable to think AI-advances can help researchers restore hearing in most cases, and reasonably within 10 years or so.
- consp 2y ago
singingfish 2y ago
The only advice on hearing aids is if you need them, get it diagnosed and intervened early. That way you get the cheapest and most reliable hearing aid that's going to work well for you. Otherwise the stuff you described in your comment around attention filtering starts to happen because of the sensory loss. Therefore the longer you avoid hearing correction once your hearing starts to become impaired, the more complex and expensive a hearing aid you need to re-do. This is because these expensive hearing aids do a poor approximation of the things your brain/auditory cortex was doing prior to the sensory loss. BRB - better go book a hearing test.
moffkalast 2y ago
> you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing Do people genuinely have that ability, to listen to a specific person and ignore the rest? Asking because no matter how hard I try I can never understand a fucking thing if there's many people talking loudly in the background, it all mixes together into an incoherent whole.
- andrelaszlo 2y ago
  "Selective auditory attention is a normal sensory process of the brain, and there can be abnormalities related to this process in people with sensory processing disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder,[30] post traumatic stress disorder,[31] schizophrenia,[30] selective mutism,[32] and in stand-alone auditory processing disorders.[33]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    Ah interesting, I must have dis or that order then.
    - nolongerthere 2y ago
      Yup I have mild ADHD and as the day wears on I find it harder to do this subconsciously. I need to start making a conscious effort to focus only on the person I’m speaking with and not the cross conversation happening at the same table.
- glandium 2y ago
  I can sometimes do that with instruments in music. Never for people.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  > Do people genuinely have that ability Indeed! however like visual depth perception, not everyone has it. The human ear has a load of bits that allow removing noise from the signal. (I don't have a block diagram, sorry!) In theory one should be able to locate a noise in 3D. You can test this by getting someone to hide your phone and then ring it. if you have 3d sound perception you should be able to work out if the phone is behind/front/up/down.That forms part of the "steering" ability. Then there is filtering the noises that you don't want. Music is can be a good test for this, how many instruments played on this track, what instruments were they, what were the lyrics, etc. Being able to do this requires that you be able to filter out noises that you don't like. Again like all human senses, there are levels of ability, and in some cases can be improved with "exercise" But, hearing what people are saying against a loud background is really really hard, so don't worry too much. Plus voices have specific human social encoding, so they can be affected disproportionally
Lio 2y ago
Looking at Apple's Airpods Pro, they're starting to get some of the features of hearing aids. E.g. features to allow doorbells through the noise cancelling. I don't think anyone would suggest them as a realistic choice today but I could see Apple going after that market and where Apple goes others follow. Much like the market for prescription reading glasses has been eroded by off the self glasses.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
> they are deeply expensive Like, $50,000. I'm hoping that removing the need for prescription ones, will allow the price to go down significantly. As an older person, I have noticed that my hearing has gotten "louder," over the years. I still hear dB levels fine. The problem is that I hear all the noise. I used to be able to hold conversations in loud environments (like bar/restaurants), being able to hear the other person, despite the background noise. Not that long ago, I was at dinner in a noisy restaurant. I was sitting directly across a narrow table from someone (about 30 inches -max). I couldn't hear a word they said. They could hear me fine (they were younger). If this works out, it might give the folks currently collecting $50K a pop, another way to charge eye-watering money.
- criddell 2y ago
  What kind of hearing aids cost $50k?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    I suspect many of them. I was shocked, when I found out. Of course, you aren’t just paying for the hardware. You are also paying for all the medical stuff surrounding the kit. You can understand why vested interests fought so hard to prevent making hearing aids OTC. Like I said, I suspect that gravy train may have derailed.
    - newaccount74 2y ago
      They don't cost 50k. They cost at least an order of magnitude less. My moms hearing aids cost 3000€. They support bluetooth so she can use them with her iPhone. The price includes hearing tests, getting molds of the hearing canal, all the setup and configuration performed by skilled technicians. Sure they are expensive, but there really isn't much of an opportunity for disruption. Customized hardware is expensive, there's no way around that.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
eek2121 2y ago
I don’t have hearing aids, but I do suffer from hearing loss. That being said, the Apple Airpods do a wonderful job of helping with that in the adaptive or transparency modes. Apple was working taking the platform even further at one point and I would not be surprised if we see some new announcements eventually. Imagine if a $200 set of airpod pros outperformed top hearing aids.
- eek2121 2y ago
  Link to an article about it: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-use-your-apple-airpods-pro-as-hearing-aids https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-use-your-apple-airpo...
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  I too suspect they're looking into it beyond existing prevention features, they've had some opt-in studies for airpods: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-hearing-study-shares-preliminary-insights-on-tinnitus/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-hearing-study-s...
passwordoops 2y ago
The expense isn't a tech problem, but an anti trust problem. A small cartel controls the supply, so the only incentive is to maximize profits, not out compete with better tech (0) (0) https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/silencing-the-competition-inside https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/silencing-the-competition...
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Yup, in the US this was because they were classified as medical devices which made barrier to entry extremely high. However, the laws regulating this got looser over the last year so we will be seeing more competition now that they can be sold OTC.
thsksbd 2y ago
Instead of fancy shmancy AI, could a pupil tracker on eyeglasses be used to estimate where a person wants to hear and use phasing to amplify the signal from there? You have two microphones already, spaced about 30 cm apart...
- gertlex 2y ago
  Microphones are cheap right? Just have multiple on each ear while you're squeezing in the AI features too :)
  - thsksbd 2y ago
    The problem, as I understand it, is that the wavelength of sound is very big relative to the microphone spacing.
    - gertlex 2y ago
      I'm also far from an expert on wavelength stuff when it comes to applied uses, so I'd have similar questions. But my hearing aids do in fact already have two mics per ear (about half an inch apart), and use them to let me block out some of the noise behind me. I suspect you definitely get big improvements from a greater spacing in a microphone array than what fits on an ear though!
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  Yup thats basically what most AR glasses are capable of (or in the case of the linked aria glasses, research device that does have all the sensors.) but you don't need eye tracking all the time, as most you can latch on to the location of the speaker without looking at them continuously. The possibilities are rather good, but it needs someone willing to fund the research
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
randlet 2y ago
"One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are." Expensive, yes. My hearing aids cost ~$2500CAD each but "how shit hearing aids are" is not my experience at all. My hearing aids (Widex) are awesome! The quality of audio in normal situations is fantastic. My only real complaint is that they're not completely waterproof so I have to plan ahead a bit if I'm going to be outdoors in the rain.
OkGoDoIt 2y ago
Are those project aria glasses actually available for purchase? You say cheap, that implies there’s a price somewhere. Looks like an internal experiment. I would love to be able to buy something like this, but all of the commercially available wearable computers are pretty crappy in my experience.

wazoox 2y ago

The French youtuber Deus Ex silicium made a through analysis. Basically, hearing aids are slightly worse than ordinary wireless headphones, but 10 times more expensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPmwfbLPHG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPmwfbLPHG8

abdullahkhalids 2y ago
I doubt that is true. The hearing aids sold as medical devices, have to satisfy regulatory standards. So a lot of incentive to use older reliable tech. Not to mention, it probably takes a couple of years to get the certification for a device. So, any device to market is easily 2-3 years old tech by definition.
- eequah9L 2y ago
  I think you meant "I don't doubt"? Because none of what you said sounds like a counterargument to what the parent said.
- datpiff 2y ago
  > Not to mention, it probably takes a couple of years to get the certification for a device. So, any device to market is easily 2-3 years old tech by definition. Approval can be quicker for hearing aids as there are already works-alike devices on the market. 510(k) clearance takes less than 6 months.
PoignardAzur 2y ago
From what the video says, it sounds like you could get a much better price by buying the devices directly from the constructor, even without the healthcare subsidies. But doing so means you need to calibrate them yourself. I wonder if some constructors could target this use-case by making aids that are very easy to self-calibrate. On the other hand, the median hearing aid user is pretty old, has lots of disposable money and has never watched a youtube tutorial in their life, so it might be a small market.

rock_artist 2y ago

Yep. My grandma (may she rest in peace) had all those. I've actually thought of doing something like they did when she was alive and I've tried communicating with her at family events or in-public. I guess they're expensive because of relations with medical / health companies being complaint makes things expensive (eg. the same display but with certification to use in a medical facility would cost many times more).

angra_mainyu 2y ago
I recall being a student in the biomedical electronics/biomedical devices lab and was curious about one piece of equipment that cost about ~10k EUR. The device is relatively simple to make so I asked my teacher why were they so expensive. He said that yeah, the engineering/manufacturing side of it is about 200 EUR, the remaining 9.8k EUR is spent on certifications/paperwork. Obviously, wages factor into this but over time I've come to see how paperwork and paying lawyers do in fact account for the majority of the cost.

andrelaszlo 2y ago

Modern hearing aids are pretty cool. They've crammed in an amazing amount of features in a super tiny form factor, with a battery that lasts for a week even when using bluetooth. My Phonaks have the ability to automatically switch programs to some extent, and to fine tune the program using a companion app. I can function and even have conversations to some extent in noisy environments, something that would have been impossible for me with hearing aids from a decade or so ago. I'm very grateful for this of course. The pair costs roughly $2000. Luckily, it's covered by the national healthcare system[0] (which I of course pay for through my taxes) so I end up paying $50 every five years or so. I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to not just amplify and filter (even if it's in very clever ways) but to isolate and enhance/reconstruct voices in noisy environments. Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss.[1] 0: https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/en/about-us/healthcare-for-visitors-to-sweden/about-the-swedish-healthcare-system/ https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/en/about-us/healthcare-for-vi... 1: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17168504/restaurants-noise-levels-loud-decibels https://www.vox.com/2018/4/18/17168504/restaurants-noise-lev...

KaiserPro 2y ago
Those do look good, and in the last 3 years the price has dropped significantly. in the uk those cost about $3k, so not much difference. alas, they are not covered by the health service, only lesser ones.
unsupp0rted 2y ago
> I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to not just amplify and filter (even if it's in very clever ways) but to isolate and enhance/reconstruct voices in noisy environments. I often see AI hopes expressed in this format. I would put it another way: > I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to restore hearing to baseline average human level Wishful thinking would be to enhance it beyond baseline. It's perfectly reasonable to think AI-advances can help researchers restore hearing in most cases, and reasonably within 10 years or so.
consp 2y ago

singingfish 2y ago

The only advice on hearing aids is if you need them, get it diagnosed and intervened early. That way you get the cheapest and most reliable hearing aid that's going to work well for you. Otherwise the stuff you described in your comment around attention filtering starts to happen because of the sensory loss. Therefore the longer you avoid hearing correction once your hearing starts to become impaired, the more complex and expensive a hearing aid you need to re-do. This is because these expensive hearing aids do a poor approximation of the things your brain/auditory cortex was doing prior to the sensory loss. BRB - better go book a hearing test.

moffkalast 2y ago

> you tend to loose the ability to "steer" your hearing Do people genuinely have that ability, to listen to a specific person and ignore the rest? Asking because no matter how hard I try I can never understand a fucking thing if there's many people talking loudly in the background, it all mixes together into an incoherent whole.

andrelaszlo 2y ago
"Selective auditory attention is a normal sensory process of the brain, and there can be abnormalities related to this process in people with sensory processing disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder,[30] post traumatic stress disorder,[31] schizophrenia,[30] selective mutism,[32] and in stand-alone auditory processing disorders.[33]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Ah interesting, I must have dis or that order then.
  - nolongerthere 2y ago
    Yup I have mild ADHD and as the day wears on I find it harder to do this subconsciously. I need to start making a conscious effort to focus only on the person I’m speaking with and not the cross conversation happening at the same table.
glandium 2y ago
I can sometimes do that with instruments in music. Never for people.
KaiserPro 2y ago
> Do people genuinely have that ability Indeed! however like visual depth perception, not everyone has it. The human ear has a load of bits that allow removing noise from the signal. (I don't have a block diagram, sorry!) In theory one should be able to locate a noise in 3D. You can test this by getting someone to hide your phone and then ring it. if you have 3d sound perception you should be able to work out if the phone is behind/front/up/down.That forms part of the "steering" ability. Then there is filtering the noises that you don't want. Music is can be a good test for this, how many instruments played on this track, what instruments were they, what were the lyrics, etc. Being able to do this requires that you be able to filter out noises that you don't like. Again like all human senses, there are levels of ability, and in some cases can be improved with "exercise" But, hearing what people are saying against a loud background is really really hard, so don't worry too much. Plus voices have specific human social encoding, so they can be affected disproportionally

Lio 2y ago

Looking at Apple's Airpods Pro, they're starting to get some of the features of hearing aids. E.g. features to allow doorbells through the noise cancelling. I don't think anyone would suggest them as a realistic choice today but I could see Apple going after that market and where Apple goes others follow. Much like the market for prescription reading glasses has been eroded by off the self glasses.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

> they are deeply expensive Like, $50,000. I'm hoping that removing the need for prescription ones, will allow the price to go down significantly. As an older person, I have noticed that my hearing has gotten "louder," over the years. I still hear dB levels fine. The problem is that I hear all the noise. I used to be able to hold conversations in loud environments (like bar/restaurants), being able to hear the other person, despite the background noise. Not that long ago, I was at dinner in a noisy restaurant. I was sitting directly across a narrow table from someone (about 30 inches -max). I couldn't hear a word they said. They could hear me fine (they were younger). If this works out, it might give the folks currently collecting $50K a pop, another way to charge eye-watering money.

criddell 2y ago
What kind of hearing aids cost $50k?
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I suspect many of them. I was shocked, when I found out. Of course, you aren’t just paying for the hardware. You are also paying for all the medical stuff surrounding the kit. You can understand why vested interests fought so hard to prevent making hearing aids OTC. Like I said, I suspect that gravy train may have derailed.
  - newaccount74 2y ago
    They don't cost 50k. They cost at least an order of magnitude less. My moms hearing aids cost 3000€. They support bluetooth so she can use them with her iPhone. The price includes hearing tests, getting molds of the hearing canal, all the setup and configuration performed by skilled technicians. Sure they are expensive, but there really isn't much of an opportunity for disruption. Customized hardware is expensive, there's no way around that.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

eek2121 2y ago

I don’t have hearing aids, but I do suffer from hearing loss. That being said, the Apple Airpods do a wonderful job of helping with that in the adaptive or transparency modes. Apple was working taking the platform even further at one point and I would not be surprised if we see some new announcements eventually. Imagine if a $200 set of airpod pros outperformed top hearing aids.

eek2121 2y ago
Link to an article about it: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-use-your-apple-airpods-pro-as-hearing-aids https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-use-your-apple-airpo...
micromacrofoot 2y ago
I too suspect they're looking into it beyond existing prevention features, they've had some opt-in studies for airpods: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-hearing-study-shares-preliminary-insights-on-tinnitus/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-hearing-study-s...

passwordoops 2y ago

The expense isn't a tech problem, but an anti trust problem. A small cartel controls the supply, so the only incentive is to maximize profits, not out compete with better tech (0) (0) https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/silencing-the-competition-inside https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/silencing-the-competition...

bongodongobob 2y ago
Yup, in the US this was because they were classified as medical devices which made barrier to entry extremely high. However, the laws regulating this got looser over the last year so we will be seeing more competition now that they can be sold OTC.

thsksbd 2y ago

Instead of fancy shmancy AI, could a pupil tracker on eyeglasses be used to estimate where a person wants to hear and use phasing to amplify the signal from there? You have two microphones already, spaced about 30 cm apart...

gertlex 2y ago
Microphones are cheap right? Just have multiple on each ear while you're squeezing in the AI features too :)
- thsksbd 2y ago
  The problem, as I understand it, is that the wavelength of sound is very big relative to the microphone spacing.
  - gertlex 2y ago
    I'm also far from an expert on wavelength stuff when it comes to applied uses, so I'd have similar questions. But my hearing aids do in fact already have two mics per ear (about half an inch apart), and use them to let me block out some of the noise behind me. I suspect you definitely get big improvements from a greater spacing in a microphone array than what fits on an ear though!
KaiserPro 2y ago
Yup thats basically what most AR glasses are capable of (or in the case of the linked aria glasses, research device that does have all the sensors.) but you don't need eye tracking all the time, as most you can latch on to the location of the speaker without looking at them continuously. The possibilities are rather good, but it needs someone willing to fund the research

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

randlet 2y ago

"One thing that the HN crowd should appreciate is just how expensive and shit hearing aids are." Expensive, yes. My hearing aids cost ~$2500CAD each but "how shit hearing aids are" is not my experience at all. My hearing aids (Widex) are awesome! The quality of audio in normal situations is fantastic. My only real complaint is that they're not completely waterproof so I have to plan ahead a bit if I'm going to be outdoors in the rain.

OkGoDoIt 2y ago

Are those project aria glasses actually available for purchase? You say cheap, that implies there’s a price somewhere. Looks like an internal experiment. I would love to be able to buy something like this, but all of the commercially available wearable computers are pretty crappy in my experience.