Apple's AirPods Pro hearing health features
theverge.com
theverge.com
If anybody from the accessibility teams is reading this, please know that it is difficult for me to overstate my gratitude and my appreciation for the amount of work this must've taken.
Music sounds unbelievably better through my AirPod pros, and I didn't even know what I had lost until I heard it again.
I'm willing to bet that a lot of my middle aged compatriots don't even know how much their hearing has degraded… Get your hearing test tested, folks, while you still have it!
Disclosure: Working musician. I wear musician's earplugs when playing in bands.
Everybody has vastly different sensitivities to sound exposure.
Even identical twins with identical sound exposures can have drastically different hearing profiles especially as they age.
I actually have always been very careful with my hearing; there is some evidence that I may have a very very mild congenital birth defect that makes me prone to hearing loss, but that's largely speculation.
My wife is actually older than me and has a spectacularly sensitive hearing - as does her mother! - and she's the drummer! (The wife, not her mother :-) I just do keys and vocals...)
That's why it's so important that everyone protect their hearing because even though it's not too loud for the people around you, it might be too loud for you - and you won't know until it's too late.
Although I try not to think about that too hard because... well it's kind of depressing.
But it's the exact reason that hearing aids are so difficult to design.
For example if you were to naïvely try to just "add back" 50 dB of gain to a 70 dB ambient sound, that hearing aid would be trying to pump 120 dB of sound energy into your ear canal... which would actually cause damage to the surrounding cochlear bands...
But if it doesn't try to add something there, then everything sounds distorted because you have way too much sound energy from the other frequency bands, perhaps ones where you have much higher sensitivity.
Hence the multi band compression and why it's so difficult, and why hearing aid manufacturers focus on speech intelligibility above and beyond everything.
As a musician, you possibly have custom ones, but for anyone else who’s not an audiophile, you can get decent ones that mostly preserve the sound while lowering the volume for around $15-20. A godsend for concerts.
Many of the rock players are moving to in-ear monitors, which block everything but replace it with your monitor mix, received via wireless.
On the other hand, some band mates, and my kids, play classical. Their needs are a lot more critical in terms of perceiving their tone quality. A benefit of the fitted plugs is that you can get the capsules with less attenuation, which means you're still safe in something like a classical ensemble, but without losing too much.
Maybe necessary for movie theatres too. Contemporary volume levels are abusive (imo).
My Apple Watch is screaming at me that its damaging levels of audio, and I can’t imagine listening to the show without protection.
Not directly related to your case, but I thought I had some age-related hearing loss when listening to Spotify Premium only for a decade. I appreciate their recommendations (found me a whole bunch of new interesting bands, even new favourite ones), but didn't know how awful Spotify's quality is even in comparison to Apple's standard codec.
I didn't make the switch yet since for lossless since I don't have enough space on my phone, but am considering it, even for just showing support for the current music quality efforts over at Apple.
The Apple RDF seems strong here.
Because most of the benefits of Apple/Tidal lossless come from the fact they are encoding in 24-bit, 192 kHz direct from the original masters.
I used to be like you many years ago, thinking that high samplerates and bit depth were essential and the ultimate way of getting the best possible sound quality, but in reality 44.1khz 16bit is plenty for humans. Get over it. Whoever mixed the 192khz version essentially remastered it and put a bit of a spice over it. You can easily prove it by producing a downmixed 44khz version (use a high quality resampler) from the 192khz version and trying to blind ABX both, I doubt you will be able to spot any difference, and if you do, congratulations your sound system has some weird intermodulation issue from the high frequencies present in the high sample rate version, that is causing a listenable sound to appear (which should not be there).
It seems more like you need to get over it. I have never cared about bit rates etc. I just care about how it sounds and I know that lossless sounds significantly better to me and to many others.
The amount of gaslighting when it comes to audio is always bizarre to me.
People often trot out the "most people can't tell the difference" argument, but I wonder how many of those people have actually tried a variety of tests? My hunch is very few.
I've done it myself when buying hifi equipment.
The reason it's funny is that it was "mastered" with a mid-80s domestic cassette deck.
As much as I love it it's probably not the best source material for a detailed test of sound quality.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fwiw I believe Xtal was originally made from samples recorded on cassette, so there's definitely a ceiling on how dynamic it could sound.
With the quality of audio improving so much in recent years I would take a guess that almost anyone can appreciate the significant difference in sound quality for < $50.
On cellular on my iPad/iPhone I stream at AAC and then high-res lossless on WiFi.
When the stream switches the improvement in clarity and sound stage is very apparent.
Pretty fancy I know.
I mean I can't claim complete 'ignorance', I have more audio toys than many (a "Schiit Stack" on my desk (DAC, mixer and amp) and a couple of "low end" headphones, Sennheiser and Hifiman planars), but by the time you are discussing cables... next thing it's whether wood volume knobs will eliminate unwanted resonances from your sound stage.
Favorite comment I heard on such things: Music lovers buy equipment to listen to their music. Audiophiles buy music to listen to their equipment.
There are many things that (can) go into digital mastering and re-encoding that can make huge differences in actual audio quality of the final product, even with the same file format and bit rate.
320kbps of what?
Theoretically, if Spotify's claims are true, Ogg Vorbis at 320kbps should be indistinguishable from lossless in most listening scenarios. In practice, I found this not to be the case and there is a significant difference, even when using lossy equipment like Apple Airpods Pro.
I do not understand where the difference comes from. It could be that Spotify uses a crappy encoder. Could be that they "cheat" on bitrate. Or it could be the interplay of different compression schemes. But something is definitely off. I compared to Apple Music with lossless and Roon ARC playing my own FLAC-encoded media.
I really wish Spotify offered lossless.
Not even talking lossless, as Spotify doesn't even offer a lossless option.
I don't want to be patronized on what I allegedly can / can not not hear by a "Premium" service I've been paying for for 10 years.
I've had hearing aids for years. People don't notice unless you don't have much hair or you have to have the industrial strength ones.
I do not understand the stigma around these things.
The one time someone did say something slightly negative that included "oh it's that guy with the hearing aids" I came back with "yes, and thanks to them I can hear what you just said, the clue is in the name", which got a general laugh that helped a lot. But that was a one off, apart from people slightly staring sometimes when they notice them, no one seems bothered.
They even know the mechanism: the slow imperceptible year by year withdrawal from rich communication patterns with our environment.
I found that it took me a little while not to feel "old" when I discovered that I needed hearing aids.
But my oh my what a difference.
It's difficult to describe to someone what it's like and how much less cognitive energy you have to put into even simple things like discussing lunch with your wife!
It's weirdly isolating not being able to communicate in certain meeting software or on some phones because a computer thinks I'm the machine.
I had the same experience as you did - what a difference.
This already happened to blind people. We used to have color testers, specialized audiobook / ebook players, GPS devices, text scanning / OCR machines, devices for banknote recognition, barcode readers, talking scales, thermometers, blood pressure meters and so on, all as separate devices, all extremely expensive. Nobody really had or carried all of these at once, though most people had at least some, it was just too expensive and impractical.
Nowadays, while those devices still exist, all you really need is any smartphone (even a low-end Android will do, though iOS is much better for this use case IMO), a free screen reader, which both OSes include by default, and a couple of free / cheap apps. Things like talking scales can be replaced with accessories connected over Bluetooth that don't technically talk, but that expose the measurements to your smartphone screen reader.
I did some recent experiments with the openai api recently to see if I could make sense of photos by classifying and describing things. That worked surprisingly well for the absolute minimal effort I put in (<30 minutes) and I've been meaning to follow up on that to properly turn that in a product feature in our app.
Anyway, something simple hooked up to a camera shouldn't take that long to code. There might be good enough locally running models for machine vision as well. Reading signs, menus, describing what's in front of you, etc. I bet that there is some low hanging fruit there for visually impaired people that are a bit handy with programming in terms of really useful apps that they could develop with this.
Another aspect of using consumer tech like this is that it's normal. People wearing airpods don't stand out as hearing impaired or special. Most hearing aids on the other hand are clearly recognizable as such. I imagine some people don't like wearing them for that reason. They are kind of ugly, generally. Unlike e.g. glasses, there's no such thing as designer hearing aids. They are kind of a necessary evil for people. Apple is being clever here by tapping into a market of aging but wealthy people with a taste for good stuff.
Pretty much everyone eventually suffers from some sort of "disability". Hearing, eyesight, motor control, strength, etc. etc. So, I like to think of accessibility features as being made for everyone. Some people just need them earlier or with deeper functionality than others.
Result is, even at my age, I can still hear those annoying high frequency teenage repellents (ubiquitous in Tokyo). Can also hear some of my electric devices charging.
I'm glad to see such steps being taken by Apple. I always bring my noise canceling buds (Sony, Apple) with me when I go see movies. It's literally painful to watch movies in modern theaters without them. Just too damned loud!
Apple's on the right track. Personalized health and more daily monitoring of said health is gonna be a sea change event.
> It may look silly, but I still plug my ears when a large truck/train passes by.
Do not be afraid, fellow high-sensitivity brother. As scientifically proven, the normies brains will literally melt when they become unable to follow conversations, excluding them from social life, while being too stubborn to wear hearing aids and suffer from tinitus. Meanwhile we will continue to hear.
> noise cancelling buds
Consider Moldex 780201 SPARK PLUGS, my go to earplugs for sleep and when I am sure I don't need to listen to anything. Deeply inserted they provide extreme noise cancelling and are even better than airpod prods in some frequencies (though worse in others).
Now when I’m at festivals and I have friends without earplugs, I usually recommend them to just use their AirPods Pro (if they have some) instead of buying cheap plugs
Good earplugs (I use Etymotics myself) can do this without affecting the sound quality, making concerts enjoyable and safe.
Ear plugs reduce the volume to a level where you can still hear the music, but the risk of long term damage is reduced. (You can get "musician's ear plugs" which attenuate all frequencies equally, so they don't make the music sound weird.)
For some kinds of music it is more or less ingrained in the culture -- think of the "It goes up to 11" in Spinal Tap. But in fact it's worse than that; almost all music is played way too loud.
During the Covid period I attended a number of smaller scale events, that for some reason used a lower sound volume. It Was So Much Better. Those events proved what I already heavily suspected: you do no need those high sound volumes to fully enjoy music.
[1] Sigh, actually, I am able to understand but it's just sad instead of funny: the experienced professional musicians have all partially lost their hearing from years of too-loud music. They don't trust the juniors to set up the equipment, so they tune it to their deafness level. This then damages the hearing of the juniors, so by the time they get to be senior enough to be trusted with the volume knob, they're half-deaf themselves.
Maybe I'm just more cognizant of it these days, but I don't remember festivals and parties in the past turning things up quite so loud as seems to be the case these days.
Capitalism just lets you scale it out to new heights! :)
But inly to justify a higher price tag? Yes it is true they are premium products, but I don't think it's true that they're that much more expensive than similar items occupying the same marketing niche from other manufacturers.
And they are far more than an order of magnitude cheaper than even a low end set of hearing aids.
But all of that is despite the point.
Samsung, Sony, Bose,… The list goes on. I have bought high-end headphones from them all, some with some without noise cancellation. In ear, over the ear, wired and Bluetooth... the list goes on.
NOBODY has a headphone that accommodates my hearing loss except Apple.
And they started doing it years ago as a feature buried in the accessibility settings.
But they kept improving it to the point where it is now FDA approved.
"A plus point in a differentiation matrix…?"
This is the kind of action that buys customer loyalty for life. I hope you never get to experience the depth of hearing loss that many of us have and how utterly transformative this kind of technology not just can be, but IS.
IIRC Jabra earbuds have had "hearing aid" features for years. They, unfortunately, don't help with single side deafness the way the Hearphones do.
Apple isn't doing anything groundbreaking here but they are doing it at a very competitive price. The airpod features also do not help with single side deafness. :(
I've been waiting to buy them until I confirm support, but their support reps didn't even know.
I can understand the cynicism, but I think Apple's investment into accessibility and health (I'm talking heart attack detection, not gamified activity tracking fwiw) as a differentiator is one of these rare win-win situations.
In the classical view, consumer desire is called "demand", and demand creates the incentive. But that's also not the definition of capitalism, and it's also valid for non-capitalist systems.
>At a shareholder meeting in 2014, a conservative finance group wanted Cook to make a commitment to doing only those things that were profitable. Cook replied, "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI."
SONY.
Apple really took Sony's playbook and ran with it, with the whole ecosystem play and strategy tax. Jobs famously took inspiration from there, Sony lost to Apple on the music market though, and got toasted again on mobile phones, despite having been researching the market for so long.
And then freaked out when Android copied that off them which seemed a tad hypocritical.
https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone...
Note the date. Here is a later article:
https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/30/3201162/apple-refutes-cla...
This is how court cases work. One side shows a gotcha thing, reporters repeat it, everyone forwards it. Then the other side refutes it, but that doesn't go viral.
The judge decided this wasn't a thing.
This will never be not true. You're fighting human nature. The vast majority of people don't need hearing aids and those who do you'll likely know they need a hearing aid if you're having regular or more personal conversations.
If you're getting your order taken at Starbucks, you can totally have ears in even today.
That’s what I remember hearing.
Obviously that changed when they got super popular. Your AirPods comparison is fantastic I had totally forgotten the phenomenon of “blue tools”.
You know who in your life has the hearing impairment, but the vast majority do not have this disability thusly "taking your ears out" is respectable.
The glasses analogy only works if general society has hearing impairments, but that's not the direction we're going as the human race, so we won't see this.
The stigma will/should go away, because more people will keep their earbuds in; because they will use them as hearing aids.
But we're saying most people don't require hearing aids and thus will never reach mass market and thus the stigma won't disappear.
Society will still think it's rude if someone they know who doesn't have a hearing problem under 40 doesn't take their ears out when trying to have a material conversation with them. It doesn't matter how many old people have airpods in. Because again - the younger group generally doesn't need it.
Taking your ears out is a sign of respect and showing attention like the article says.
Why are we so bent on fighting human nature?
Happily, 'banter' still is. And - watch out world - the Ami's are getting used to it. A very, very, tiny little bit.
Prior to hearing aid features, I’d say this is actually quite rude even if you “can.” I don’t think the service workers taking your order appreciate this very much.
I mention this as you can use these today as hearing aids, you just need to use a third party app to create your audiogram. I have fairly bad hearing loss and use Airpods instead of hearing aids.
I expect that insurance plans that cover hearing aids are going to cover this eventually, as a set of AirPods Pro 2 is $249, which is substantially cheaper than other hearing aids on the market. An open question is if any other manufacturer will be able to get a device that works this well at this price point - the amount of software and chip design engineering that went into H2 and the bridgeOS or RTKitOS that the AirPods run is just not something smaller manufacturers will be able to easily copy.
Now, I wish I could find a better eartips fit for my ears... XS doesn't pass in the app as having a good enough seal, and S is just a little bit uncomfortable for me for all day use.
Well, "classic" hearing aids have two features that I don't see Apple replicating any time soon: longer battery life (AirPods roughly last around 4-6 hours depending on battery degradation and usage, whereas hearing aids run for days) and most especially, support for audio induction loops [1] - basically PA systems for the impaired, you'll find these in churches, conference/meeting rooms, concert halls/stadiums and in the UK also in taxicabs.
Classic hearing aids will have their place for quite the time to come.
https://www.complyfoam.com/products/apple-airpods-pro-ear-ti...
Seems like they are regulated for safety, and there are lots of (decent) requirements.
I hope so because when you enable your audiogram for transparency it sounds like you're in an ASMR video. There's no way to make it sound natural but louder, which is what I would expect from a hearing aid.
The hearing aid stuff was only recently certified by the FDA as an OTC hearing aid. Apple has had a mode for a many years where AirPods + iPhone could act like a hearing aid. But it didn’t meat the medical classifications.
But it was simply called "an accommodation". Can't call it a hearing aid until you were approved by the FDA!
* Air Pods 2 were approved by the FDA in September
* iOS (and iPadOS) 18.1, for which the release candidate was released earlier today, comes with the ability to enable hearing aid mode and with a hearing test
* based on the hearing test, the AirPods can automatically compensate how things sound to you
* Apple has announced that iOS 18.1 will be released next week
For example: Does active noise cancellation result in more or less hearing loss?
Or Alcohol consumption: Apple Health could ask each day how many drinks you had and many people want to track it anyway. Correlate that to health metrics at a wide scale. It'd be much more powerful than any currently existing study given the userbase likely to opt-in.
Let people see exactly the data that will be uploaded prior to consenting to alleviate any privacy concerns. They already have stronger data-protection and anonymity mechanisms than those used by most studies built directly into the phone.
Apple did run something like this in their heart research study. But not specifically counting drinks, just more survey like questions.
Several organizations have used ResearchKit to conduct studies:
Do most research teams have to build their own app?
As someone with a diagnosed, severe hearing loss, I wonder how these compare to prescription hearing aids. I currently wear a pair of Phonak hearing aids and am looking to replace them, but I wonder if spending 5-6k on another pair is worth it versus the OTC or Apple AirPod options that exist today.
I have a very nice and expensive set of ReSound hearing aids and they're fabulous at what they do, which is focus on speech and kind of on music if I set them for that.
They're also unobtrusive and easily last 18-20 hours on a charge. I forget I'm wearing them, and nobody notices that I have them.
My AirPods I use primarily for running and listening to music because they just sound unbelievably better, and they're probably fine for a concert although I haven't done that with them. But I think for long-term use every day all day it wouldn't be that comfortable or unobtrusive.
Would love to hear the experience of somebody who's trying it, though!
Comfort? To me, very comfortable. I just leave them in there with Active Noise Canceling on all the time.
I may be showing my age, but if you remember "Get Smart", AirPods Pro 2 are like a Cone of Silence -- except they actually work.
Hearing aids are actually a a lot more complicated than just boosting frequencies. At the very simplest, these days they are wide/multi band compressors that try to balance discomfort with natural hearing, generally focusing on speech intelligibility since that is by far the most important target.
If you have severe hearing loss I would strongly recommend putting yourself in the care of a professional. Costco is a great source of probably the lowest cost versus highest quality hearing aids these days... but the reason I say "professional" is because there are so many kinds of hearing loss and they all affect your perception markedly differently.
It's a lot more than just "missing some sensitivity at some frequencies".
But regardless of where you or anyone else is, hearing aids are eye-wateringly expensive :-( and often for rather understandable reasons.
Since they are comparing to devices $1K and up, maybe getting two pairs makes sense.
I have a feeling that it might be difficult for Apple to obtain FDA authorization for a system consisting in part of a device that Apple didn't manufacture (i.e. an Android phone). Getting the iPhone + Airpods system authorized was unusual enough already.
I had to work in very loud and noisy environments and I also cycled to work through rush hour traffic in a busy city. The roughly 150$ for a custom molded in-ear protectors/filters (they lower between 10 and 25 db specifically aimed at limiting big event noises - music/announcers/etc). You can even get models with swappable filters, so you can easily get a few filters for different needs and swap them out.
Check with your local pharmacy or doctor and get them. If you can't afford them as $150 is a lot for many people, I've had a friend use the loop in ear protectors, but at an event where we worked a 16 hour day, he said that they got very uncomfortable, while my custom-fitted ones were still good!
Also if you're a costco member you can get your hearing checked in their audiology department. its included in your membership. you should use it.
Has anybody tried a slight volume reduction adjustment with AirPods, or maybe one of those special earplugs that just make things quieter and noticed any difference in their parenting?
Does this mean that the latter will be available internationally? It would be a game changer for me!
Exclusive inside Apple’s audio lab where the company is taking on hearing loss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOkiDwH98sE
The hearing aid feature, to me, is a little overblown. It feels to me like the biggest positive impact it will have is, with some luck, forcing down the price of typical hearing aids and opening up the conversation on more competition. It might also be good in a pinch, and good for lower income customers(?), but I think at the end of the day there's a reason why hearing aids are generally pretty slim, skin colored, and innocuous. There's no reason why I have to take my Airpods out when I order Chipotle, I can hear everyone perfectly fine with them in, but I do because there will always be social stigma talking with someone who has earplugs in.
There was an "event" on Threads a while back where a wedding photographer asked "the world's" opinion about asking attendees to take their Apple Watches off. Some people say "oh hell yeah, those are gaudy, I don't want any of my wedding party even wearing one at any point in the event", meanwhile one person responded "The Apple Watch is literally a medical device for me, I need to wear it as often as possible, I can't take it off". Idk; feels like a related concept. Sometimes the social stigma doesn't matter, these devices drive some people insane with anxiety about their health, Apple's marketing plays up the anxiety because it sells hardware every year... at some point, someone will say "I can't take the Airpods out, they're my hearing aids, as diagnosed by iOS 18.1", and maybe this is just me being an old man yelling at clouds, but... that's cringe, go see a doctor.
The other angle I don't hear talked about enough: The Air Pods Pros don't have the battery life to really fill the same role as hearing aids.
- Can airpods tell me how loud a room is?
- Which settings should I use for a concert to preserve fidelity? How do they compare to "concert" branded consumer earplugs, like Loop/Etymotic/SoundProtex ?
> Can airpods tell me how loud a room is?
I don't think so, but my Apple Watch can.
> Which settings should I use for a concert to preserve fidelity? How do they compare to "concert" branded consumer earplugs, like Loop/Etymotic/SoundProtex ?
Transparency mode was fine, but focuses on blocking and reproducing sound through the built-in microphone and speakers.
They will never be as good as "concert" earplugs which reduce volume evenly.
Although the undisputed value in all this, won’t we still find it weird everything is always being (recorded and) processed. Or perhaps is weird when it’s not if you are born this way.
A new post-modernism of yet unknown proportions is going to be in a dare need.
Can’t stop thinking of Aldous Huxley with this and Adderall and all.
If Apple wants to listen to everything everyone says, they already are. (And where they go, and with whom they communicate, etc.)
My go to since then has been the one plus z2 headsets, brilliant call quality, great form factor, decent ANC, and fantastic battery.
Also, everybody I know who has hearing aids eventually ends up getting them at Costco.
But if they’re $4000 a pair, that’s _sixteen_ pairs of AirPods 2 Pro. Assuming you don’t get them on sale.
So if you lose/break ‘em every 6 months, which seems quite excessive, that’s still 8 years to break even with “real” hearing aids.
And that’s not to mention the fact that you can buy replacement individual AirPods or cases cheaper than a full set. Or just get AppleCare so replacements are even cheaper if you tend to lose/damage them a lot.
Even if you buy them and they convince you hearing aids would be useful but you want more traditional hearing aids, it still seems like it might be a good value. Compared to risking $4000 on something you might not even feel is that useful to you.