Google Is Developing Native Hearing Aid Support For Android (theverge.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google announced today that it's working with Danish hearing aid manufacturer GN Hearing to create a new hearing aid spec for Android smartphones called ASHA, or Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids. It's designed to be battery-efficient, while providing high quality audio with low latency. Hearing aids utilizing this spec will be able to connect to and stream from Android devices without having to use another intermediate device. ASHA will enable Bluetooth hearing aids to be utilized the same way as headphones, used to call friends or listen to music. Google has published the new protocol specifications online for any hearing aid manufacturer to build native hearing aid support for Android. GN Hearing has announced that the ReSound LiNX Quattro and Beltone Amaze will be the first hearing aids to receive direct streaming support in a future update.
Hearing Aid Market one of the biggest ripoffs. (Score:3)
Ok, 40 years ago, this was high tech stuff. But today you are spending thousands of dollars (or your insurance company is, or the government) for a form fitted earbud of questionable quality.
The formfitting, should be the most expensive part, which should be the same as what professional or active armature swimmers get for their earplugs. Then you in essence stuff $30 worth of technology in them.
Hearing Aids should probably cost today around $100.00 and still make profit.
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As soon as you slap a medical label on anything, you have to abide by regulations. Regulations don't come cheap. In the case of hearing aids, apparently they are very expensive.
Re:Hearing Aid Market one of the biggest ripoffs. (Score:4, Informative)
I agree they are overpriced, but $100? Not quite. My hearing aid has two microphones and the audio processing circuitry to shape the incoming sounds to compensate for my hearing deficiencies (I have lost most of my hearing in my left ear above 2KHz due to an acoustic neuroma), without blowing my eardrum out if there is a sudden loud noise. So they're a bit more sophisticated than a wireless earbud. But, yeah, I paid about $3K for mine five years ago and if it weren't for the combined government and workplace benefits, which covered half, I may have gone without one.
On a side note, I just had my annual appointment with my audiologist and I mentioned how my workplace had just switched from cubicles to open concept, and she rolled her eyes. Apparently there is a consensus among audiologist that this is an incredibly dumb idea. I agree. I find it very hard to concentrate due to the slightest audio (and visual) distractions.
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two microphones and the audio processing circuitry to shape the incoming sounds to compensate: All fine and good, but for 2018 this is easy stuff with modern system designs. Most of this stuff can be done with software with a standard set of Hearing Aids.
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for a form fitted earbud of questionable quality
There's nothing questionable quality about most of the hearing aids out there. They are often incredibly well manufactured to specs Dr Dre has never even heard of, using very bloody advanced even for current times - realtime audio filtering which has continued to be adapted and improved over many years.
The fact you think they should cost $100 let alone could be made for that is laughably ignorant.
But by all means, go buy a cheap chinese headset, strap an audio processor and some batteries to your forehead.
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So you work for a hearing aid company then?
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He clearly does since he didn't agree with you.
In fact, most people that have a different opinion than you are paid for that purpose.
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No. I do however have two friends who are biomedical engineers who do work for hearing aid companies and thus know quite a few people in the industry and how it works, and I briefly interned at a hearing aid company while at University as well.
You think you can produce something for closer to $100? Do it! No seriously DO IT! You would corner the market. You would instantly push out all competition. ... You would also very quickly file for chapter 11 and learn a valuable life lesson, namely that designing an
Hearing Aid Market CAN BE the biggest ripoff (Score:2)
High end hearing aids (as WhatHump) indicated are very sophisticated devices and should probably cost around $100 to make (going by my experience with cellphones/manufacturing).
But, the big cost is the audiologist programming the DSPs in the hearing aids to the user. Ear moulds don't take very long to do and should not be more than $50 or so per ear.
A good audiologist with the right equipment (including a testing booth) that is willing to take the time to a) characterize the person's hearing loss, b) progr
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Since they are considered medical devices, they are swept up in this system of perverse incentives that is healthcare in the US. Insurance companies are happy with exorbitant price gouging because they simply increase rates and get their slice of a bigger pie.
That said, audiologist testing performs a car
Economy of scale, especially NREs (Score:2)
My Signia hearing aids cost about $5000 and that is certainly outrageous.
There's also the matter of economy of scale. A hearing aid chip is an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and a complex, multicore, one at that.
I've been on several such projects. As of a few years ago the non-recurring expenses of building one paid to the fab was over a million bux, and the engineering team was much more.
And if you made ANY mistakes that required a "spin" it was anywhere from about half that (if you could
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Do you think there is hope for this class of hearing aid to come down to less than $1k?
They aren't already Bluetooth audio? (Score:2)
Now I don't know much about hearing aids -- but then this is /. I can have a strong opinion anyway -- but why aren't hearing aids already standard bluetooth audio devices? I imagine it's not *quite* that simple, but it seems bizarre to me that this is even needed, we've had a protocol for transmitting sound data between devices for ages. It's pretty disappointing that this is even necessary. Can someone with more experience expand on this?
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Now I don't know much about hearing aids -- but then this is /. I can have a strong opinion anyway -- but why aren't hearing aids already standard bluetooth audio devices? I imagine it's not *quite* that simple, but it seems bizarre to me that this is even needed, we've had a protocol for transmitting sound data between devices for ages. It's pretty disappointing that this is even necessary. Can someone with more experience expand on this?
Many are already equipped to function that way over Bluetooth, so I too am puzzled that there is a need for a new standard.
That said, I haven't read the article ...
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There are a number of hearing aids with BT. As I note in my post below they really don't work all that great for phone calls as they don't have a great algorithm for filtering out ambient noise when somebody is taking a call. I was told that this was to avoid situations where the user doesn't become oblivious to what's going on around them.
It's interesting to see the comments on this thread about power usage - neither of my kids have used BT enough with their hearing aids to see a battery life problem.
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Do you know how tiny most hearing aids are, and how little power is available? The ones my father and grandfather wear are like those little earwig things you see in the movies. Itty bitty little devices with tiny batteries. It's only recently that bluetooth radios have become low enough power to put into these things.
You have big ears (Score:3)
...an old standard (Score:2)
how about? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Build one. Give it a go. Let's see how much of a rip off you think it is by the time you finish the R&D for an incredibly low volume piece of gear.
Hold on before buying/Get a good audiologist (Score:2)
I have two kids who need hearing aids and this is not the first time I've seen these types of claims for wireless/device connections. They both have Bluetooth equipped devices and they're pretty marginal in terms of their usability. The two hearing aids listed here are $3k+ and, depending on your insurance, you will probably have to pay a pretty high percentage of that.
On the point of cost, most of what is paid out goes to the audiologist who's fitting and programming the hearing aids. $3k for a set of h
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an audiologist that knows what they are doing can make the $3k a bargain in the difference the person has in terms of improved hearing. Note that an audiologist who is skilled at working with the elderly will probably not have the experience dealing with hearing loss in younger people.
What I don't get is why you need an audiologist at all. My understanding is that what the fancy-pants modern hearing aids do is pitch shifting from frequencies you've lost to frequencies you've still got. So why doesn't the hearing aid just come with an app that handles that? It would give you a hearing test, you press the button when you hear a noise and so on, and then it maps the pitch-shifting. This seems like a relatively trivial job, what am I missing?
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No offence, but that's PHB logic. It's not that straight forward, it's not that simple, and if nothing else, you probably don't have the anechoic chamber required for a proper hearing test.
Sounds like you've never had a proper hearing exam done.
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It's not that straight forward, it's not that simple,
Isn't it?
and if nothing else, you probably don't have the anechoic chamber required for a proper hearing test.
Use the mic to determine when the background noise will permit the test, and perform it ten times to avoid false reports. Or send the user a sound-deadening box to put over their head, they can mail it back to you when they're done.
Sounds like you've never had a proper hearing exam done.
I have had. They reported as to my ability to hear various frequencies. There was nothing magical about it, though, and certainly nothing some software couldn't have done without them.
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Good aids (like the ones we (developed and some others) help wi
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I worked in the aid biz for awhile and have some mixed feelings about audiologists, but not all bad. Aids don't frequency shift,
Seems like you haven't worked with hearing aids in decades, because they absolutely do shift frequencies [hearingtracker.com]. Given that you declared that they don't do this [hearingreview.com] thing which some have done since 1998 [hearingresearch.org], it's not clear how much value your anecdotes on this subject will have. I became aware of it simply by reading literature on the subject quite some years ago, and I've never even worked in the industry, so it's not like it's a secret [instructables.com].
Supposedly, it's not just a hearing test you get at the audiologist - a *good* one would be at least looking into the "why" a little bit, as an aid might not be the whole answer to your issues - the cause of the loss might be ongoing and at least somewhat correctable.
Yes, that sounds like a good reason to go to an audiologist. An app might actually be
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At the time the company that took our tech and made a big success of it was Miracle Ear.
But if it helps
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Calling what an audiologist (should) do as "pitch shifting" is inaccurate. They need to map out the frequency deficits and then determine which ones are the most critical for understanding speech. Then they will check against different ambient noise types and develop a profile. Next, they will create the ear mould that follows the profile with an eye towards avoiding resonances - they have a few tricks they can do in terms of adding cavities and ports which can improve the performance significantly. The
The other brand... (Score:2)
Good to see this coming to Android. I didn't even consider there were any challenges of using mobile phones with hearing aids.
I did have a quick search about that other brand, so see how it compares: https://support.apple.com/en-c... [apple.com] . The HAC rating is explain in article [betterhearing.org] at the Better Hearing Institute.
One thing I am curious about, is beyond the software work going into Android, how much Google will need to push the hardware manufactures to get that functionality integrated into the phones, if extra engine
DRM (Score:1)
Will the hearing aids and handheld robots that implement this protocol have the source code available, in a reproducibly building way so that we can verify what they do is what they say they do?
Did the Verge ask these questions? If not, why not?
What?? I can't hear you... (Score:1)