My son's audiologist is (of course) quite bearish on this whole prospect. Her response was to ask who is going to do the audiogram programming for the airpods.
I imagine this is probably something that could be automated away, though.
I feel like that's letting perfect be in the way of better.
Are airpods the best hearing aid? no, but they cost 1/5 the cost from what I'm seeing for 'cheap' professionally fit & programmed hearing aids which opens it up to a lot of people who otherwise might be struggling to interact with the world.
Yep. They're also a hearing aid that isn't conspicuously a hearing aid (i.e. "I'm not hard of hearing, I was just listening to some music earlier and haven't taken them out"). For younger users who might feel self-conscious about using a hearing aid, that's a big plus.
> who is going to do the audiogram programming for the airpods.
you mean using the gram output as filter stack? That's in the options > airpods > on the bottom.
It can also scan in a printed audiogram (using the camera) and apply corrections based on that.
> Her response was to ask who is going to do the audiogram programming for the airpods.
I'm not following, Apple has released a hearing test app with this and it works quite well. (I use these as hearing aids)
> I imagine this is probably something that could be automated away, though.
Even if it isn't, the audio programming capability can likely be added to the software completely eliminating hardware costs for anyone who already owns Airpods.
I wanted to try this for auditory processing disorder, but I passed the hearing test with flying colors, so it won't let me try. Is this some regulatory thing?
Not likely. It needs to build a profile of what sounds you can’t hear in order to know what to specifically make louder, if there’s nothing to specifically make louder, then the feature cannot work. Just turn up the volume, or increase the noise cancelling, or turn on voice isolation, or whatever you actually want it to do.
My hope is that it will one day be able to attenuate the speech of people I'm not trying to listen to.
That’s an interesting idea, but I wonder, how would it know who you want to hear? Like if I’m sitting at a long table for a big family meal, I’d want to hear everyone, but if I’m sitting on a bus I’d like to only hear the person I know, sitting next to me. I can’t imagine there’s a good way to differentiate those situations.
Yeah I was hoping for this too. But sadly it wont let you turn it on..
One thing that is a bummer about this feature is if you have little to no hearing loss you cant turn it on anyways to "enhance" your hearing.
You've been able to do that for years now, in a way. I forget which setting it's under, but it uses your iPhone mic.
It's actually really wild, you feel like a spy. You can eavesdrop on conversations you wouldn't be able to hear otherwise.
But you have to be extremely careful, because if a loud sound comes along then yikes.