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Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

I’ll chime in with a sidebar: Anyone got any experience using hearing aids for the "hearing in noise" issue (aka. King-Kopetzky syndrome or lack of cocktail party effect [0], part of a whole bunch of things also called adhd for ears). Essentially I have filtering issues, as soon as multiple people talk, I can’t really understand anyone anymore, unless they very directly speak into my ears so they are significantly louder than other noises.

It’s a brain thing, my hearing itself is above average for my age (40), so I’m not sure what exactly can be done, but there was an article many years ago about someone (Bose?) working on aids for that issue, no idea what came of it. I guess all modern hearing aids have some focus mode.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder

edit: In case there’s an airpod suggestion, I’ll also need to know if that feature works on Android, it’s not crippling enough to make me use an iPhone.

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I posted this standalone, but replying to you since you specifically asked about HAs in noisy environments.

The newest HAs have AI that helps in noisy environments. The ones I have are the Phonak Audéo Sphere Infinio I90s. I've worn HAs for 40 years. It's truly unbelievable in noisy environments. I know it's easy to think it's all marketing garbage, but some great demos on YT of the technology. I keep them in AI mode all the time when I have them on, and charging them for an hour at lunch is enough to get me the necessary runtime.

Sadly I can’t afford high end HAs. And from what I’ve read, you don’t really get HA prescriptions for stuff like APD with no hearing loss.

But it’s cool that this stuff is now integrated, hopefully those advancements will eventually trickle down further, from what I’ve now read, the AirPod Pro feature is a bit of that trickle.

Hearing in noise is both what most people want from hearing aids and what they are least equipped to provide.

The traditional solution is an FM system where you give the person speaking a microphone linked to your hearing aids. There are dedicated ones like Phonak Roger. You could probably also use your phone as a microphone if it's bluetooth connected to your headphones or hearing aids.

That’s more a solution for far more extreme cases, including actual hearing loss. This would be far more involved than me lining up my ears with their mouth ;)

Least equipped to provide? They've been working on machine learning algos for exactly this purpose for twenty years.

That sounds awkward.

The tech for isolating a speaker at conversational distances exists. You use half a dozen microphone transducers (minimum; Crappy microphone transducers are cheap and quality is expensive, so just use a bunch of them), and through a combination of phase and intensity they decode relative location, and amplify that phase expectation while suppressing everything that isn't phased like that. Sound is slow, and readily susceptible to real-time triangulation. The math/processing is much easier if the parallaxes are fixed (eg the microphones are arranged in a line array on the top band of a rigid pair of smart glasses), but with a little latency it's not prohibitive for a deformable array to solve for its own relative position as well.

Addressing comments on hearing aid technology:

Often people who lose their hearing want to be able to hear in social situations such as restaurants and family gatherings. In this context, the signal and noise have similar properties and are coming from the same direction. Directionality helps but can only do so much. Noise reduction can make hearing aids more comfortable to wear but don't necessarily improve comprehension in challenging situations. Progress here is fantastic -- at the same time it helps to have realistic expectations.

Putting the mic on the person speaking sidesteps the problem -- it's like the rest of the room isn't there.

I'm completely lost in noise. The benefits for this kind of thing is part of why my audiologist pushed for hearing aids with directional microphones. And they do help. But it's not a fix. I'm still mostly lost in noise.

People rely on the (usually very large) dynamic range of hearing to be able to understand in those situations. In people with typical hearing the brain filters out the sounds too loud or too quiet to be what they are trying to listen to. But hearing aids act as compressors reducing the dynamic range.

The second part is why I wonder if there’s anything targeted at the problem instead of badly solving it as a side effect.

Have a look at librepods [1], which was lately on HN.

___

1. https://github.com/kavishdevar/librepods

That seems to enable airpods, but I have no idea if airpods are in any way applicable to the issue.

Airpods might be totally applicable here:

>When your AirPods Pro are connected to your device, you can use Conversation Boost to focus on the person talking in front of you. This makes it easier to hear in a face-to-face conversation.

https://support.apple.com/guide/airpods/use-and-customize-tr...

librepods appears to support this feature

Ohh, that is interesting. I’ll research this, thank you.

Hah, this made me find the subreddit /r/AudiProcDisorder where people discuss those and others for exactly that reason.

edit: Damn, tool requires root because of a bug :/

On Linux it works out of the box as I understood. So maybe time for a linux phone? ^^

Bose used to make these noise cancelling earphones called the Hearphones that could focus on the speech of person in front of you and they were amazing:

https://support.bose.com/s/product/hearphones-conversationen...

I absolute loved them, but unfortunately lost them, and they are irreplaceable.

These were great and I am always on the lookout for something similar, but no luck so far.

I also liked that there was a neckband - easy to take the buds out when not needed and leave them hanging, and of course more power in a larger battery.

One seen lots like this on sites like AliExpress. Of course, not Bose, but classed as a hearing aid rather than headphones.

I have the same problem (took 35 years to find out), and hearing aids with directional microphones might work. I don’t say they will, but it is worth to try it.

Thanks for bringing this up, I'm often lost in a setting with competing voices. I don't strictly need hearing aids but the few times I've had my earbuds in with ambient voice enhancements it's really improved my QoL. Gonna have to look into this more!

I know nothing about this, but if you have slightly above average hearing, maybe that's part of the problem? Have you tried weak earplugs (like loops or etymotic or flare or whatever)?

They sure seem to be marketing in your direction. No idea how well they work though.

It's mainly about frequencies, essentially I can hear as if I were still 10 years younger. Sadly not the solution ;)

But thanks, and I'll say loops are amazing for the price for concerts.

Airpod Pros work well for me in adaptive mode for this, I've never compared to devices more dedicated for this thing, but it's enough for me. They seemingly reduce most of the surrounding noise while I can still hear the person talking closest to me.

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