SoundFocus (YC S13) Launches With an App for ‘20/20 Hearing’ | Hacker News Reader

SoundFocus (YC S13) Launches With an App for ‘20/20 Hearing’

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87 pointsvarunsrin35 comments

This is an interesting case of a disadvantage becoming an advantage. The CEO suffers from significant hearing loss, but that enabled him to see a huge market that most 20-something founders overlook.

What's cool is that in addition to this being a tremendous product for an overlooked market, the comments here seem to indicate that it has great value even for non-hearing-impaired users. Excellent potential here.

Love the idea, but it does precisely nothing for me at the moment.

I have significant hearing loss in one ear. The app doesn't seem to distinguish between ears(?) So when I try to calibrate it, I can hear practically the lowest noises on all the screens, so it doesn't really seem to do much whether I turn it on or off.

It's not uncommon for people to have one considerably worse ear; in fact, I would guess it's a lot more common for someone to have one bad ear (due to an infection or similar) than it is to have equal problems in both, though I may well be wrong about this, but even if still think it's worth considering. (Edit: I can't find specific figures comparing incidence of unilateral vs bilateral deafness, but there are certainly plenty of people out there in a similar position to me, e.g. see [0] and [1])

I'm actually in a privileged position of having the results of a professionally-taken hearing test, so I know exactly which frequencies my hearing is bad at too. But the app doesn't seem to show the results of the test it does, so I can't verify its accuracy.

Still, I hope it improves, because I've always wanted an app like this (or, more precisely, an app that would generate a custom corrective EQ curve for each ear). I'll watch with interest... Certainly won't be deleting it yet anyway, and it's nice to see the app itself being so polished.

Edit: I almost think the set-up screens are too simplified. If someone does have significant hearing problems, they'll be more than prepared to spend a few minutes setting it up if it results in a better correction (e.g. more frequency samples and one for each ear).

[0] http://www.hear-it.org/Single-sided-deafness [1] http://www.singlesideddeafness.com/ssd_report.pdf

Co-founder here - thanks for the great feedback Osmium. You're quite right in that the number of people who have unilateral hearing loss is pretty high (it's close to 40% from some recent studies).

We're working on developing a test that works well for people with single ear hearing loss for a future app update - would you be interested in trying out our beta? Please drop me an email if you are: varun [at] soundfocus [dot] com.

I've had significant hearing loss in one ear since birth and finally got around to getting a hearing aid after finishing school last year.

Right now I typically put the standard Apple earbuds over my hearing aid when walking around, but strongly prefer my Bose QuietComforts when I'm coding and want noise-canceling. This obviously isn't ideal because my hearing aid and the QCs don't play nice together, so I end up just taking out my hearing aid to use them. Really looking forward to seeing what's in store, and happy to help however possible - I'll email as well re: beta testing.

Alex (my co-founder) had this exact problem except in both ears, and he uses our app every day for the same reason - hearing aids just don't play well with earbuds or headphones.

Thanks for signing up whbk, it's always great to get more beta testers to validate the changes to the sound processing as we keep improving it.

Would love to try out the beta! Thanks :) Email sent.

This was my experience with the app as well. I could easily ear the lowest noise at all 3 ranges the app presents (lows/mids/highs) (does the app even play anything when it's at the absolute lowest volume setting?). I have what a doctor called "bionic" hearing in one hear and some loss in the other (got too close to a speaker while filming a concert), so testing each ear separately is important to me.

I was expecting to be pretty underwhelmed by this app, but I have to say, I'm impressed.

My office has a pretty loud HVAC system, and it totally kills the low end when I listen with a pair of cheap Apple earbuds.

I took the little SoundFocus hearing test, turned on their EQ, and the difference was pretty pronounced. It killed a bit more high end than I would have liked (seemed to roll off after about 12k), but the lows were definitely spot-on.

I'll probably use this during my commute on the super loud city busses.

edit:

I don't actually suffer from hearing loss. I'm just picky about audio quality (former recording/mixing engineer) and have an unfortunate tendency to spend a lot of time in noisy places.

Adding noise can damage the ears, and adds more stress to the body.. just saying..

Not sure what you mean by "adding noise".

I assume if external noise is drowning out the music / changing how it sounds, then the music will be modified to let you hear certain sounds better via making them louder.

loceng, we try to avoid that - a simple equalizer will create an amplification of frequency bands without gain control, so you get a sound of higher amplitude/magnitude, which can have a negative impact as you pointed out.

We use some techniques to rebalance your music - by making sounds that are softer in the mix louder, while keeping the very loud sounds at the same level. We also try to change the relative volume of the frequency bands you do not hear well, while preserving the overall volume.

Since psychoacoustics vary a bit from person to person, it may be perceived as mildly louder or softer than the original, but overall it will be at a similar volume level.

I'm legitimately curious about how a former sound engineer finds himself using a pair of cheap Apple earbuds at work.

I've found that it's actually harder for me to concentrate on doing real work when I have high-end monitoring.

It almost always seems to come from snare drums. I'll be working away, not really paying attention to whatever random song comes on, and all of a sudden I'm like "Wow. The reverb on that snare is beautiful. I don't think that's digital -- it sounds like a real plate. And it's got so much attack. The compression is perfect. I bet that's an 1176. It's too fast to be an LA-2A, and too clean to be a Distressor".

And then I just have to know who mixed it. So I'll do a quick Google search, and find out that it was A.J. Mogis. And then I'll need to find some other record that he mixed and load it up on Rdio.

And this happens All. The. Time. when I use nice headphones.

With shitty earbuds, I basically have no idea what the fuck is happening, so I can kind of enjoy the music passively and actually get stuff done.

My dad recently went to the doctor for his hearing and ended up getting a hearing aid. We had joked for a few years that he needed one - but were kind of surprised when it turns out he actually did.

He told all of his friends and family about how much his hearing and in turn day-to-day life has improved since getting them. Two of my uncles and one of his friends got their ears checked and ended up getting hearing aids as well.

I believe it when I read that 1 in 5 people need one. Goodluck to the SoundFocus team!

Co-founder here - thanks for the well wishes, 6thSigma. We've seen people significantly improve their quality of life once they find a solution for hearing loss, but most people are reluctant to go out and find one, because they're expensive, time consuming to get, and stigmatized. We're really hoping to solve these issues with our app and upcoming hardware product.

I think the article was saying that only 1 in 5 people who need a hearing aid have one, rather than that every 5th person should have one.

I read it correctly but wrote the sentence incorrectly.

I love the idea of prefacing a hardware release with an app that is both useful to many people and could get some people interested in the hardware who otherwise wouldn't be. I myself am pretty sure I have perfect hearing but am interested in trying this out when I get home from work tonight.

Excellent and long awaited initiative! I have a genetic hearing loss on both ears. It's a bit different on both ears though. Now I use Poweramp for Android with its excellent EQ to tune the audio as good as possible after my "cookie cutter" audiogram. On my computers I use the system wide EQ "Hear" [ http://www.prosofteng.com/products/hear.php ]. One inherent flaw with all solutions I've come across so far though (as with yours?) is that EQ can't be tuned differently for each channel (left and right).

Nice idea though. But I'll have to wait for a system wide Android EQ (there is one, but it has too few bands https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smartandro... ). Preferably combined with your hearing test based EQ (can't say much about it as I don't use an iOS device other than at work).

This is really cool. I have a friend who is a very talented multi-instrumentalist but who also has hearing loss in the low frequency range. I sent him this app and look forward to finding out how / if it helps him listen to his own recorded music.

Thanks Muraiki - we'd love to hear what your friend thinks of the app.

I asked him if it helped, and he unfortunately said: "Actually no :( All it did was boost the bass up so much that it just got muddy." But I think he has a pretty severe impairment in terms of hearing bass frequencies, so I don't know if there's much that could feasibly be done.

How are you processing the sound?

Enabling the algorithm significantly reduces sibliance, and alot of details in the upper mids disappear. Drums and guitar attacks in particular. Not especially pleasing. I tried playing with the equalizer presets, and they didn't seem to exhibit the same artifacts.

Then again, I'm hardly your target audience, and I was demoing on very revealing studio headphones. I'm gonna give it a shot on my commute tomorrow with earbuds. I'm guessing it improves clarity on vocals quite a bit.

Question for the founders:

I'm completely deaf in one ear. But, I can't use normal headphones - the sound coming in on my right (bad) ear causes some health issues. As a result, I usually cut the right earbud wire entirely. This seems like a really dumb solution.

Does SoundFocus let me make all the sound come into the left earbud?

keiferski, SoundFocus doesn't do this today. But stay tuned, we are working to help people who have single ear hearing loss as well.

I'm actually interested in learning more about your particular use case, I'll drop you a line on the email address in your HN profile.

Thanks, and feel free to email me!

iOS can do this natively. Under the accessibility settings, select "mono audio".

No; that will make the sound the same through both earphones which isn't what the parent poster had in mind. iOS does solve the problem natively though (I believe): it has a left-right balance slider, so you can just push it all to one side, then sound will only come out of one earphone.

Dumb question: after completing the test, I didn't see "soundfocus autotuned" (or whatever) as an EQ option. Not sure if it is automatically applied and then you pick additional EQ settings to go on top of it, or what. Hope that makes sense

In the bottom left, there is an on/off toggle if that helps.

Thanks - I figured it out. There was a brief message on playback start that I must have missed a few times which let me know soundfocus was unavailable due to DRM. The bottom left icon says "---- DRM" in that case so until I saw the message I didn't know what I was missing

Ignoring the sound-loss test, I love this app simply because it's the only free equalizer for the iPhone that works with Spotify!

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