The way it works is that your iPhone/iPad will run a 5-minute listening test with them in your ears, playing different tunes and beeps to measure your hearing ability at different frequency ranges. Once it has a profile of your individual hearing, it can then dynamically adjust the hearing aid functionality to match.
I tried it out myself and the process was fast and easy. It was very similar to the process I went through when I got a hearing test at Costco, except all in software with no audiologist present.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) my hearing loss wasn’t significant enough* to actually enable that feature Anyone else tried it and have real-world experience with it?
* Not a humble-brag. I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s so hard for me to isolate voices in a conversation and hear what people are saying, both in real life and in movies. I thought it was age-related hearing loss, but nope… the search continues =/ In the meantime, though, I’m still curious whether the Airpods (and other over-the-counter hearing aids) can actually replace the traditional, expensive ones.
They’re built-in (and used for other existing functionality, like the excellent noise cancelation). The iPhone is just used for the hearing testing software.
A friend of mine, who has been a big Apple fan dating back to the Apple II days, is now in his 70s, and has some hearing loss. He’s now using Airpods as hearing aids, and is very happy with how well they are working for him.
I use a similar, but not medically recognized feature, on my Sony XM5 earbuds, that will pass through ambient sound, and amplify voices. I think this is primarily to maintain situational audio awareness when also listening to the earbuds, but it does work as a sort of hearing aid because it makes voices easier to understand for me than when using bare ears.
The biggest drawback is that when I talk wearing both earbuds, regardless of the passthrough setting, I get that clogged ear feeling, where my voice is muffled and speaking is annoying. That means I’ll often take at least one out to hold a conversation, even though I can hear the other person very well with the earbuds in.
Do regular hearing aids, and the Apple ear pods have a way to avoid that feeling?
I did that very thing two weeks ago (out of curiosity; should it turn out I need a prescription hearing aid my insurance (German statutory insurance) would of course pay. Going to ask a ENT doctor some time in the future if it would be advisable).
Hearing test: The instructions were straightforward; I had to wait first for my wife to leave for a sufficiently long shopping trip as a longish period of quiet is needed.
The hearing test for the left ear went through on the first try; the hearing test for the right ear was rejected on the first four tries with the error message: possibly too much background noise. I suspect the real problem is that I have significant tinnitus so it is hard for me to distinguish the testing noise over the tinnitus.
A software design error IMO: if the test for the right ear is rejected you have to redo the tests for left and right ears, so because the test for the right ear was rejected the first four times I had to test left - right - left - right - left - right - left - right - left - right rather than left - right - right - right - right - right as would have been necessary.
The hearing test said I had low hearing loss in the left and moderate hearing loss in the right ear
After activating the hearing aid function my subjective impression was the I heard speech more clearly sometimes. One much more noticeable effect was that I suddenly I heard my shirt rustle and crackle every time I moved.
For what it’s worth, I have what seems to be a similar condition. I have excellent hearing for sounds in isolation. But mix several sounds together, such as a party scenario with multiple voices talking over one another, and they turn into mush. I talked to an audiologist many years ago; she thought it was probably something neurological. Not dangerous, not a sign of anything else, and no real solution in terms of treatment or hearing aids, just a static and annoying limitation on how I process sound, and I’d just have to put up with it. So… that’s what I did. I’d be curious to know whether there’s anything else to it.
I had an idea like this years ago, but my android programing skills are pretty much non-existent.
Seems like a low price point for Rx hearing aids in the OP. I’ve had 3 sets of hearing aids. Each set ran around 5k. They are, I guess, ‘top of the line’
I finally have some aids that I can control with my phone. Big difference.
After reading all the above posts no one has mentioned specifically TV listening. I have to have the closed captioning turned on because although I can “hear” what’s being said on the TV, I can’t understand the individual words. Do the Air Pods help with this specific problem?
It depends. Any properly tuned hearing aid would probably help enhance the spoken word to some degree, but movies have a problem that real life normally doesn’t have (unless you’re in a war zone or something): hyper-exaggerated dynamics. When they mix the soundtrack to add super loud explosions and screams and crowd noise everywhere and the characters speak in a Batman growl-whisper, it’s going to be harder to understand even with perfect hearing. This is just an unfortunate stylistic choice that Hollywood made in recent years, emphasizing sound effects and music over dialog in their mixes, and also making movies just generally louder overall.
You might also have speaker isolation issues that a simple frequency-based hearing aid won’t fix (as I might)… real audiologists have a specific “speech in crowd” test they can do to test that. Costco does too. The Airpod testing does not.
Separate from hearing aids, though, some streaming devices (like the Apple TV) or sound bars (like Sonos) also have an “enhance dialog” mode. That works like hearing aids in reverse, making dialog clearer and louder at the source while softening other parts of the soundtrack. But even with that I still have to have subtitles on to fully understand many shows.
One final niche thing that the Airpods can do is spatial audio. When combined with a supported source (like an Apple TV or laptop or iPad), certain films can place sound and characters in 3d space around you, and fancy acoustic processing will make it sound like it’s coming from behind you or above and to the right, whatever. That sort of spatial location can sometimes help you focus on a specific speaker over the background noise. But it’s not a very common effect (only some films and shows support it at all) and usually not pronounced enough to really matter. Certainly it can’t be relied on as a consistent solution to difficult to hear dialog… at best it’s an interesting occasional addition to the above.
Anyone else tried it and have real-world experience with it?