[FRIAM] A First Look at the Bose Hearing Aid - Self-Fitting Bose "Hearing Aid" Resembles Bose Hearphones

[Steven A Smith]

Dave -

I would be interested in hearing your experiences, especially if your
need/use is "in the margins" (but threatening to grow).

I think we will become the first generation of consumer-cyborgs...  

When my reading vision started failing a few years ago, I didn't (still
don't) have the habit/discipline of keeping a (clean, unscratched,
unbroken) pair of reading glasses handy, but *always* had my smart-phone
handy and realized that not only could I take a picture of the
poor-contrast-under-low-light menu I was trying to read, but I could
just use the zoom function and hold it over the menu like a handheld
magnifier.

I haven't had significant hearing challenges (yet) but am feeling it
coming on, with lots of foreboding from various friends of mine (some
younger) struggling (mildly) with notches in their spectrum that make my
(low) voice difficult to hear/understand (or maybe I'm just mumbling
more).  It has seemed to me that standard hardware (phone
microphone/headphones) might well provide good hearing-boost with
nothing more than a clever app to do a combination of amplification,
equalization and even some frequency sqew?

This Bose system looks like it is trying to provide near-identical
functionality to prescription/custom hearing aids.  My mom (@90) finally
gave over to (very expensive) hearing aids a couple of years ago and she
can hardly/barely use them.  I think most of her problem is that she
can't get comfortable/familiar with them, and despite lots of
"automatic" adjustment, she is probably not getting them set right under
a wide range of circumstances.   If she had a lower cost to entry and
stigma a decade ago, she might be using them effectively today.

I suspect that some (many) of us would develop a relationship with our
wireless headphones that transcends just making phone calls and
listening to our beats to drown out the chatter around us.  Do we know
of any apps trying to achieve (some of) this?  

The two big things i sense that *real* hearing aids offer that an ad-hoc
system like I'm suggesting win big with would include microphones *in*
the earpieces, emulating the binaural/HRTF qualities of "normal"
hearing, and blocking out *natural* sound so that there isn't a
dual-signal coming in (is there a detectable delay in the electronic
route?).

- Steve

> Nick,
>
> The Bose Hearphone  is the product I showed you at the coffee shop on
> a visit a few months ago. I have one and use it regularly with mixed
> results. If anyone is interested, I can provide details of my experience.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2019, at 10:32 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>>
>> Dear Friammers,
>>
>>  
>>
>> One of the things we have talked about for years is the possibility
>> of smartphone/hearing aid integration.  This looks like a beginning.
>>
>>  
>>
>> https://www.hearingtracker.com/news/first-look-at-the-bose-hearing-aid?utm_source=Hearing+Tracker+Updates&utm_campaign=5ff252547f-cvsupdate_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_790a5b8263-5ff252547f-455404113
>>
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>
>
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