I have decent hearing, but when I'm in a noisy environment like a bar, I can hear but can't understand what other people are saying. It's why I don't like going to bars/pubs with live performances or ambient music.
People think I'm bored or brooding because I'm not talking to anyone, but I just can't understand anything anyone says, so I can't participate in a conversation.
Are you sure you have decent hearing? I thought I could hear what people were saying in noisy environments, but couldn't understand anything. This was one of the major symptoms for me before I was diagnosed with moderate/severe hearing loss. It's very isolating. No problems now with a decent set of hearing aids.
Have yourself tested! The quality of life improvement from a set of hearing aids is incredible!
edit: I was 31 when I was diagnosed, so don't think because you're young that you're immune. Generally hearing loss is very gradual so you don't really notice it. If you frequently have to ask people to repeat themselves though...
You get no sympathy from people who can hear what's going on. They simply will not understand why you are so withdrawn.
Oddly enough, my wife has somewhat degraded hearing but she hears a lot better in noisy environments than I do. Must be like applying a filter to the noise, maybe she is losing the frequencies that cause confusion for me.
This will be an interesting product to try out - I hope there are more in the area of enhancing everyday interactions, rather than providing new distractions.
Enhanced vision is another area where I am hoping to see new products.
Try these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0044DEESS. I keep a pair in my pocket. They're shockingly good, and unless someone is looking closely for them they're not real noticeable.
They're also cheap enough that a lost pair is not catastrophic.
I have the opposite problem. I can understand people fine in noisy environments, but I can't speak loudly enough for other people to understand me. The end result is pretty much the same, though. I end up not really talking to people much in super noisy environments because it's too much of a struggle for me to try to talk loudly enough.
There is a lot more to hearing than just your ear. Signals have to be processed by the brain and that's often where the problem is. A good example are children with sensory integration problems: a child will often go through phases when it will have trouble "hearing", but the actual problem will be with processing. You then have to repeat things several times so that the child "hears" you, but at the same time the child will have no problem with hearing quiet sounds. Kids are especially interesting because as they grow (and with therapy) you can observe as these things change over time.
Granted it doesn't stop me from being outgoing, but people having to almost shout or otherwise talk directly into my ear gets old after a while. I suspect it's not an issue with hearing itself so much as the brain processing the information.
In quiet conditions I can usually hear whispered conversations a good distance away.
I've been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder somewhat recently. Before the diagnosis, I had my hearing tested a couple of times over the course of my adult life but nothing was found. It was during my ASD diagnosis that I've learned that people on the spectrum may sometimes have sensory issues, and sometimes hearing is affected. It explained why I can't understand what people were saying in noisy environments where everyone else seemed to carry out conversations normally.
I often have difficulty parsing speech in noisy bar/club environs. This has always made me into a bit of a wallflower. Then I started dating a woman who was also very wallflowery, but mostly because it was a lot of effort for her to talk loudly.
We ended up having a lot of arguments, because she'd say things to me, I'd tell her I couldn't understand what she was saying, then she'd refuse to talk louder but still hold me accountable for remembering what she said.
Same issue, although exacerbated by a misspent youth near noise sources like teletypes and machine rooms. Certain high frequencies in my hearing spectrum were damaged which, as an audiologist demonstrated for me once, means I can't hear some allophones, especially from people with high voices (children, women). When its nominally quiet, my brain can fill in what those allophones would have been and I "hear" them normally, but when there is wide frequency noise in that spectrum the missing allophones cause the phonemes to become impossible to decipher. She had this tool that would play back words and could remove frequencies with a notch filter and replace the missing sound with either silence (still understandable) or noise (not understandable). Tuning a hearing aid to boost those weak areas works well for me with the exception that hearing aids don't benefit from the brains ability to focus on sounds in particular directions so they enhance the spectrum areas from all around rather than just where I'm looking.
There's a little bit of a life-hack for this (assuming your hearing really is okay) in loud environments... Push the little flap of the recipient's ear (the flap is called the 'tragus') over their ear canal to seal it off. Then you can lean in and speak loudly enough to overcome the ambient noise without hurting them.
The Army Rangers have headphones that cancel gunfire and explosions and enhance voices, they say they can have a normal conversation in the middle of a battle. Very clever!
Maybe this is another reason people think I'm brooding. I can only hear the people directly next to me in a noisy environment; not the people on the other end of a table for example. I typically assumed they couldn't hear me either, but now I'm wondering.
My mother has this issue (and so do I). Her doctor told her that the problem was a cognitive issue. Apparently some brains have a hard time filtering all of the noise into something we can understand. Have no idea if it's true but seems plausible.
I have the exact same problem. This could really be a life changer for me. Only recently I was at a reception at work after one of our town hall style meetings and in the large room with many people talking, I could barely hold a conversation. It literally took all my mental effort just to hear what the person if front of me was saying. I left shortly after because I couldn't talk to anyone.
Actually just getting some earplugs helps this. Will filter your noise and make it really easy to have a conversation at normal level with someone near you. Use this myself for sports events, sometimes lounges, and of course flights. They cost way less than these headphones and work just as well to quell the problem you have.
Or if you don't want to use earplugs, just plug your ears when someone is talking to you. Same effect really.
I suffer a bit from tinnitus and as a result have taken to carrying earplugs for noisy environments. I find in addition to protecting my ears I can hear conversation better. I think basically the ears work better in the normal db range and don't function so well if overloaded. My kit, approximately:
Wax is quite good because you can adjust the effect - put in loosely they don't block much, squish them down and they do. I also chop them down to fit which the packet advises against. I recommend for tinnitus avoidance if nothing else.
I'm the same and it drives me (and my wife if Im honest) crazy. For whatever reason I pick up background noise with much more intensity than most people. Surround sound is useless to me, I'll hear cricket chirps and background music over the dialog.
I can more of less push through it at a pub and in other social situations but its extremely draining.
You have described my problem exactly. It's impossible to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. I've been tested and other than tinnitus, I'm told my hearing is normal. This could be awesome.
Had that my whole life. I was diagnosed with "Hyper-Hearing" were normal people have a frequency bumps and dips in their hearing my was a straight line all at the top.
Now that I am lower I have ringing ears and lost the high frequency range of sound to a "slightly bellow level" and will probably never have to have hearing aids. My brain just couldn't figure out how to filter out all that noise.
Get medical help to test yourself. This is not to scare you but there are large number of sometime even trivial health issues that might cause this. It will hurt your social professional life.
I use to avoid drive-through, phone conversations etc. because there was always a 10% chance that everything I heard seemed like other person mumbling something. Medical help helped me correct the problem.
You may have auditory loss that affects only certain frequencies.
The problem is easily masked in a quiet environment, since your brain has more aural information to put the words together, but in a noisy environment, where many of the speech frequencies are cancelled by ambient sounds, you don't receive enough aural information.
Woah, so many people "suffer" from the same thing!
edit. As for these hearphones, would be interesting to test them, but dont think I've used them. Never seen the problem as a big thing. More like annoyance perhaps. And yes, I am cheap.
Too many 80s rock concerts mean there's a giant downward notch in the center of my hearing range. I gave up on socializing in loud environments long ago because people speaking is what I hear the least. I will definitely give these a try!
I think (or rather I hope) that it's the price tag and ease of acquiring them that makes this special.
I have wished to friends and to a couple people like me for a hearing aid for hyper-vigilant people. Something that turned down the entire world, except for human speech, by 10-20 dB. I have my fingers crossed that these Bose devices can be re-purposed for this, just by turning down the gain to near ambient, so I can finally have some fucking peace and quiet.
Then maybe I won't think these open seating environments are the worst development in software for the last twenty years...
My dad has tinnitus and pretty bad hearing (was a rock drummer in the 70's) but he found the hearing aids he got (they were at least a few thousand $ or more) made everything sound very digital/tinny and it was unnatural enough that he stopped wearing them. I wonder if these will sound any more or less natural than a nice set of hearing aids.
Are those hearing aids linked together like the hearphones are? It seems to me that a large part of being able to cut down on ambient noise and boost local conversation is because local conversation is more directional than ambient noise.
Do you think they'd be worth getting just for the ambient noise cutting abilities alone? My daughter has complete hearing loss in one ear and normal functionality in the other. Normally she's fine, but in a crowd she's completely lost.
I really wish someone was working to solve the problem of tinnitus. Would it be possible to generate anti phase wave out of these things to cancel out tinnitus? I would pay anything and/or wear any goofy device in my ears to live life tinnitus free.
A project I worked on suggests vibrating the bone just under the earlobe at around 50kHz with a piezoelectric stack might help. 8 years or so ago I helped make a pocket sized and rechargeable medical device that operates on this principle. Last I checked it was still in FDA hell but helping the majority of sufferers in the trials. The theory of operation is that is breaks up tiny air bubbles stuck to the hairs in the inner ear.
An interesting side note is that you could 'hear' a very high pitched sound when using the device even though 50kHz is far outside the standard human hearing range. We still are not sure but think we were hearing a lower harmonic of the tone bouncing around the skull.
I suddenly lost the hearing on one ear and it got replaced by a strong and permanent tinnitus. I quantify it as strong based on my talks with others with tinnitus.
What worked for me was stop fighting and start loving it. Now it's a perma mantra. Some somatic malfunction that enables me to ear the hum inside of me or whatever poetry works for you. Try it maybe.
I think there already is a kind of therapy. I read that they basically determine the exact frequency of your tinnitus. Then you give them music you like and they filter the frequency out. By listening to the altered music, the tinnitus is reduced. It seemed to work quiet well, but I forgot what the procedure is called.
I'm hearing a tinnitus for over 10 years now, so I know what it's like. :)
> Would it be possible to generate anti phase wave out of these things to cancel out tinnitus?
No. Tinnitus is not caused by a real sound. It occurs somewhere after the phase-erasing Fourier transform performed by the physical structure of the ear. If it were caused by a real sound, or the brain added sounds in the time space (rather than the frequency space), it would work. But neurons are not fast enough to handle time-domain sound processing, so they offload Fourier transformation to the ear and then work with the (presumably phaseless) frequency-domain representation.
see my other comment. I wish they didn't start by forcing you to have tinnitus to begin with. I'd use foam inserts if they were given out at concerts and clubs etc - but not if I'm the only one bringing them with me, that's ridiculous.
tinnitus is caused by people listening to music that is too loud. Music is too loud at most venues, if you are standing where you are meant to.
EDIT:
people don't like this comment, and point out that in many places inserts are available. All the same, the general clubs that I go to where I live, don't have them, and, more to the point, nobody else wears them. it's a social problem and perhaps a marketing problem. many bars / clubs are too loud and I as a consumer haven't been solicited to pay for a solution on-site. (even if this exists.) others I'm with don't wear anything either.
The responses here have convinced me that I likely should invest in some and bring them with me - but I don't like that I'm the only one doing so, and it seems kind of anal. i'm just being honest about how I feel. it would be easier if they were more readily available / being sold, and if everyone were using them.
I like to be cool and do the same thing everyone else does. just being honest.
An ex-coworker founded http://www.neuromoddevices.com/technology. It's still in the clinical research stage, but it's a cool device that utilise bi-modal neuromodulation and aim to promote positive therapeutic change within the human nervous system.
I have read that NMDA agonists (DXM, Ketamine, PCP, other arylcyclohexamines) work pretty well for this. Anecdotally, their withdrawal symptoms include tinnitus so I'm not surprised the inverse could be true.
I found blocking loud noise with earplugs allowed my ears to recover naturally over time to a fair extent. It may not work for everyone but it's easy and cheap to try.
comfy, snug and 32db (depending on version) of attenuation. That means that you can go to a loud gigs (95db) without the risk of tinitus.
same goes for bars. Loud noises are draining, have your hearing shattered by someone shouting in your ears is a pain.
Yes, if you choose the colourful ones its obvious. there are natural colours.
Bose makes a lot of song and dance about how you can adjust for noise, your ears do that already. The advantage of normal ear plugs is that you still retain some of the dimensionality that earphones loose.
Sadly I've had a child, and all that shrill screaming has basically killed off 10db of sensitivity of my hearing. but I'm 10db up form most of my musician friends
This is great. My wife has meniere's disease, so we need to protect her hearing in all moderately loud situations, (bars, music venues, movies). In advance of SXSW one year, I bought her a pair of these: http://amzn.to/2gK8qZv
"Musician's earplugs", so-to-speak, they attenuate all frequencies more evenly than standard foam plugs would. In effect just turning down the volume of the world a bit, not muffling it.
I don't have meniere's, but do get drained by bars and loud music. I hate to seem lame by wanting to leave a party/bar early, so I bought a pair for myself recently. They're just fantastic. Highly recommend.
I am the ideal customer: some hearing loss from my VJ days, but still appreciate frequency response. I render all my music at 192Khz.
Basic hearing aids suck at frequency response. Most drop off at around 8KHz Meanwhile, Apple has created a pipeline for hearing aid. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201466 I haven't used it.
I often work out of noisy cafes. So, I wear Bose Quiet Comfort 20 earbuds. If I forget, I will go back home to fetch them. Have even taken the QC 20's to public concerts to use the noise cancellation feature instead of earplugs.
"...and people always talk much louder to compensate for the noise. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to hear the server without any extra effort..."
And initially was wondering how he got an audio feed to his server in a restaurant and then was like "Why would he want to listen to his server". And then realized that there are human servers in restaurants.
This is basically the same idea as electronic ear protection of the kind typically used for shooting sports, with the addition of a directional microphone to the existing global microphone.
It works extremely well in that form factor, basically like having Superman ears. Conversations are audible, you can turn up the sensitivity to where you can hear footsteps clearly in a house, and gunshots are reduced to the level of, eg, a heavy book falling off a shelf.
Someone will have to explain the difference between these and your average hearing aids, which perform a very similar function, but tuned by an audiologist to your needs.
Disclaimer: I am not an audiologist, but I am married to one :-).
Because of the way your ears function, the vast majority of people who have hearing impairments have them at specific frequency ranges. Hearing aids do amplify sound somewhat, but they mostly work by pitch shifting voices away from your personal weak spots to wherever your hearing is still strongest. They also do some signal processing to differentiate voice-like noises from other sounds, amplify the voice, and actually mute the non-voice sounds.
For people who have some hearing loss, blanket amplification can be counterproductive and dangerous. Turning up the volume across the board doesn't help at all with differentiating signal from background noise, and can cause what hearing you do have left to degrade much faster than it otherwise might due to the increased stress placed on the ear.
Hearing aids are expensive, because they are a medical device. And they are also only available to people with a hearing deficiency. By not being "hearing aids", these are available to a wider audience.
This is really like having cheap, off-the shelf reading glasses even though prescription reading glasses are available and attuned to your eyes.
And folks would be interested for similar reasons. Insurance might not cover the testing that often or the device itself, for instance, or someone might not think they have the time to go to that doctor. Maybe it is only a problem every once in a while, and so on.
And like cheap reading glasses, it might not be a perfect solution, but a solution nonetheless.
If the app could filter out distant sounds, or be used to filter directionally -- and do it in a non-crappy way -- then this would be genuinely useful.
Based on the photo on the website, they look very different. Instead of being in/around the ear, they appear to have a piece that sits on the back of the neck. This could be for the battery or for an array of mics that are used for noise canceling and focusing.
"You’re one of the select few invited to the Bose Corporate Center facilities to demo Bose Hearphones for yourself."
Wow, I feel so special, and all I did was click a link on HN. This sounds like the Bose version of those cheap late-night "as seen in TV" amplifiers. Yeah, Bose is overpriced for what you get, but at least their stuff is if decent quality. Dunno, after too many years of standing in front of a Marshall stack, be it my own or other's, I could see myself interested in this.
I wonder what the side affects of prolonged usage would be. As in, would my ability to block out ambient noises without the device decline from not using the ability?
Their are already headphones let in ambient sound and headphones that fully block ambient sound. I don't think adding a volume knob to the ambient sound is going to change your brain's hearing calibration.
I'm not hard of hearing but I often have trouble understanding people at noisy meetups or conferences (or hell, parties). This sounds like an awesome solution. I'm sure I'm not the only one. But what compounds the problem is that I seem to be worse than most at understanding accents (thanks, growing up in middle America). I've gotten better recently, but still.
That means you probably have hearing damage. I read an article recently regarding this, many younger people have issues with this and it IS physical damage.
This reminds me strongly of when cigarette companies started to produce nicotine patches. Without sounding too cynical (it does look like a product that could be useful for people who just happen to be in noisey environments a lot) , I can't help but think Bose are trying to position themselves at the top of a new product line: hearing aids for people who damaged their own hearing through excessively loud earphone music but rebranded to not be considered so obviously as "hearing aids" in the current sense. Not that that's necessary all that bad, it makes sense for a top consumer audio company to tackle this "problem" if it is a thing; I'm by no means an ear expert but I wouldn't be surprised if a surge in hearing aid demand is due as the effects of prolonged earphone usage starts to surface.
I have Bose noise cancelling headphones...possibly the best purchase I have ever made since they allow me to basically turn off the environment when on a train (or plane but I commute about 1h each way daily via train so that's where they shine). My soundy friends tell me Bose sound quality is not in the upper echolon (my hearing is not fine grained enough to hear a difference so I don't really care) but the filtering is really amazing. Not surprised they improve on that and branch out a bit. I usually listen to stuff without vocals (X meets metal: https://www.youtube.com/user/331Erock) when reading as I can't concentrate if there's lyrics.
I have the QC 35's, and I have to agree with you. It was, I thought, an extravagant purchase, but after having them for a month I think not. I use them at least an hour a day and they are amazing, albeit expensive.
I never understood my poor ability to focus sound could be a thing until I read Douglas Coupland's account of sneezing out a lump of...well..his lung...his brain? I don't really know...but it's a great anecdote:
This is fascinating, because for years I've noticed that I have an acute opposite thing - I can separate sounds drastically when otherwise it shouldn't make sense. As in, I can hear a conversation, focus on it, and pick it up faintly even though it's something like 15 feet away and around a corner and mixed in with lots of general white noise. It's not a 100% thing but I think it came from years and years of practice in music (identifying different instruments, their lines/notes) and also intentionally eavesdropping conversations at bars and stuff (to practice writing better dialog).
It's a very interesting condition to have, because sometimes certain sounds will jump out at me in ways that wouldn't bother most other people - for example, the newest GMC TV commercials on US TV have this marimba chime thing that kicks in at the very end and it's a purposefully off-tempo, non-harmonized cacophony that drives me effing bonkers.
As someone who is unilaterally deaf, this is very interesting to me. I hear fine in one ear, but am completely deaf in the other.
People who hear in stereo seem to isolate particular sounds (like a voice) much easier from background noise without any/much conscious thought; whereas, I have to consciously focus on filtering out the ambient noise. Having 2 audio channels seems to allow for a sort of spacial filtering/differentiation to pinpoint particular streams of sounds. I have found that turning my head in space allows me some ability to differentiate foreground/background noise by comparing their relative change in volumes as my ear changes direction. That is more fit for deciphering sounds coming from a distance and not helpful in the case of a close conversation. If I am having trouble with a conversation in a noisy setting I normally revert to lip-reading. Unfortunately lip-reading makes it difficult to read body language and facial expressions.
As a young kid I felt a bit left out of the experience of stereo music. I experimented with setting up several of my family's radios around my room and tuning their equalizers differently to roughly separate parts of the music. By moving and turning through the room, I was able to experience the music in a slightly more spacial way.
Long time reader, first time caller...er commenter. I might be biased since I work for them, but at www.stages.co we've JUST unveiled a headphone and a tabletop product (that lets you use any existing headphones) that I think this thread would find relevant. Directional listening, noice cancellation, noise reduction, high quality audio, user configurable admittance criteria - we have it all.
Are those products you have at stages.co already developed and built or are they in development? Why would someone use that desktop device instead of the headphones?
I think you mean the QC30's.
I just got those and the app seems different.
I'm betting they're probably the same hardware with different software and will be sold separately. Because... more money
We (in Alango Technologies) liked the HearPhones for this product type. Actually, we liked it so much that two years ago we used it to name the category of Bluetooth headsets with hearing enhancement and assistive listening functionality as HearPhones™ (www.alango.com/hearphones, www.old.alango.com/hearing/index). As a DSP software provider, we started working on a licensable software package that allows transformation of a Bluetooth headset into a powerful hearing aid. Of course, BOSE were aware of it as well and, apparently, liked the idea and the name so much that they decided to name their upcoming product HearPhones™. We, obviously, don’t like their idea… Anyway, our company will introduce our own concept product from HearPhones™ category. It will be a stylish Bluetooth headset with fully customizable hearing enhancement capability. You will get much more information about it very soon (hopefully next week) on www.wearandhear.com
So basically this is augmentation of the ear. Focus sounds you want to ear, block the ones you don't. Pretty cool, but at the same time its kind of the first step towards the concept shown in Black Mirror where you just block out people you don't want to hear or see. They just become a muffled background noise.
These seem to me, at least, to be a clever, premium re-branding of hearing aids. I found myself wanting some despite having only moderate (if detectable) hearing loss, especially for the ability to focus in on a conversation in a loud environment. That is a very draining situation for me to find myself in.
Not limited to those with bad hearing, auditory processing issues are common amongst those with ASD / autism spectrum disorders / Aspergers / The Geek Syndrome.
This looks like an excellent product, and great work to their engineers.
Neat prospect, but I'm not convinced this is a big enough problem for the majority of people which is how this is marketed. I would also expect a price point comparative to other hearing aids to further distance the average consumer.
I have trouble hearing in noisy environments. When I was young I was diagnosed with an auditory processing problem so I assume it's related to that.
When I meet with someone in a noisy environment I just accept that I'm only going to understand every other word that someone says. Which leads to a lot of smiling and nodding blankly.
I know very expensive hearing aids could handle this for me but it's not a big enough problem for me to check into that route. However if this was $150 bucks or so I might get some. Though I expect the price tag will be more like $600.
Think of augmented reality. It's generally conceived as modifying what you see, but why couldn't you benefit from a computer able to modify what you hear? It ought to be possible to do a lot of Google Glass-like things, not to mention Black Mirror-like, without looking as much like a space cadet or demanding as much of the hardware. (As a hearing aid user I was thinking about this 10 years ago.)
Hm, okay. Not quite Google-Glass level overkill personal tech in the wild, but I'm not sure these will find a good patch of target market. Not quite hearing aids, not nearly as cool as headphones intending to keep the world out...I just have my doubts as to how well these are going to be adopted.
Oh, and if there comes a time when there are YouTube/Vine videos of jerks coming up behind people wearing these and screaming and/or otherwise messing with them, well, I wouldn't be surprised. Not that I'd approve, mind you. But would I laugh? No comment.
Kudos to Bose for marketing. Can't wait to see the execution.
Today, people who wore glasses or had to wear hearing aid were those with vision and hearing problems. We are moving to an era where we would voluntarily wear visual/hearing aid all the time because they enhance our natural abilities so much that it would be hard to do without it. We are now starting to augment the most basic senses with technology, in a way that is affordable enough that everyone will be doing it. In that sense, this is the dawn of an era of bioelectronic super humans.
I am totally bothered by noise in the bars. Or the fact that you go to sports bar, but you cannot hear the audio. I was thinking of building on Pi something that would plug to TVs audio output, and then broadcast that to local Wifi in the bar. So that smartphone that's connected to same wifi could receive the audio and you could listen to it on your smartphone. Turns out there is someone already doing it: http://www.limeonair.com
Like a hearing aid induction loop (a transmitter that plugs in to a venues mono-out and [I gather] transmits on a frequency for specially hearing aids).
We have similar directional, sound-suppressing "headphones" for use in the military. Specifically I used them as a gunner on a Bradley (BFV) and a gunner on a regular ole Humvee gun truck. This kind of thing is pretty impressive. I could talk to other gunners in other turrets in our security element that were reasonably close without using the radio. You could still hear everything happening around you -- incredibly important -- without blast sounds and weapons fire causing your ears to ring.
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There's more money to be made in certified medical devices. My father worked in medical device certification before he retired and fought a long and eventually losing battle with a businessman, who wanted to have his vacuum cleaner product certified as a medical device(ostensibly it was supposed to somehow deliver drugs by spraying them on the floor).
I humbly submit that they need to work on the name. I've had a long day and not much sleep and my eyes didn't recognise the difference between "hearphones" and "headphones"; the two even sound pretty similar. I know it's intentional and clever, but it's quite subtle. Especially if you don't have good hearing...
I have always used my QC20 noise cancelling earbuds in this way so I'm glad it will get better. Just last weekend in a noisy eatery I put them in and my SO and her friend thought I was listening to music, but I said, "No, now I can hear YOU". Cool.
As someone who lost hearing in one ear as a young kid Its always exciting to see companies work on this space. Honestly from their marketing websites its not 100% clear where this is going but I do look forward to seeing
they need to get into something they can rent at clubs and concert venues. Clubs are ridiculous. Every time I go to a club, I don't wear hearing protection, and this means that I am consciously making a choice to lose some of my hearing. I should be able to get some foam things that reduce my hearing damage to something reasonable.
but imagine if I could rent some kind of insert that actually lets me talk with others who also have theirs (because it filters using also a microphone.) how awesome would that be.
clubs and concerts, dance halls etc suck. waaay too loud.
> Every time I go to a club, I don't wear hearing protection, and this means that I am consciously making a choice to lose some of my hearing.
Maybe you should consciously make a different choice, such as bring ear plugs with you. There's plenty of brands that come in a container that fit easily on a keychain so they're not forgotten.
Most ear plugs I've used in clubs or at concerts actually improve (or at the very least make no difference) ability to have conversations.
Probably the best way to have a conversation with someone in a loud club is to stick your finger in your ear. Once you've sealed the hole completely, you can hear them fine!
Yeah, what you want is an earplug that will basically cut out the noise, and then a sophisticated device like this, to allow you to hear directionally, or to reduce background noise, to emphasize speech, and so on.
I'd be interested to see what happens to the noise level of a bar room with everyone using these. Would the clarity of sound reduce everyone's volume to conversational?
When I go with family to the shooting club, we have these hearing protectors that double as hearing enhancement. This seems like a natural extension off the range.
really interested in the technology behind this. Obviously non voice frequencies can be filtered but how are they determining which voices are too far away to matter?
I'm sure I could probably read up more, but if these work it's definitely a "shut up and take my money" situation for me. I'm about as ADD as it gets and I have a really hard time when there are multiple conversations going and I try to listen to them all.
If they can't do the acoustics right, this is the solution. But the focus should be to push good architectural design. Which is lacking almost everywhere.
There are passive versions available as well. Obviously they won't have the same capabilities as active noise canceling, though.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BCR0MNO/
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The technology behind them isn't groundbreaking, but I can think of some good uses for devices like this.
Basically it appears to be a combination of noise cancelling and directional microphones so that you hear more of what you're pointed towards. If you want to get a better feel for how these devices could work, I'd recommend taking a look into directional microphones.
Bose has not delivered in tech since the 70s. Color me skeptical, but this seems like a cheap hack for an existing product of theirs with a crapload of dodgy marketing.
Their noise canceling headset and earbud products are better than anything on the market, so that's not quite right.
I use the QC20 earbuds, which are even better at noise canceling than the QC15 headphones. As a developer, they are my number one tool to get into the zone.
They're also very calming on airplanes and elsewhere with a lot of low- or high-frequency noise.
I have tried a number of noise canceling headsets, but Bose is the best, something reviews also confirm.
(Audio quality is also in the top range, according to me. Not quite as good as my Sennheiser HD25, but close enough.)
You're probably referring to their speakers but their noise canceling earphones and headphones are widely considered to be excellent. When I was shopping for noise canceling earphones (I work at home, with three kids 5 and under) my research led me to buy Bose.
Is it just me or does this landing page suck? The top banner doesn't go all the way to the edges, logo is square but buttons are circular, grey icons on a black background, only black and white, etc, etc. Then you get this absolutely butchered review:
> I was with my husband at Smokey Bones
What is that?
> …The room was very noisy as it always is there because they have tv's going and lots of music and people always talk much louder to compensate for the noise.
I'll let this one slide
> I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to hear the server without any extra effort order my meal with smooth going.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
boobsbr|9 years ago
I have decent hearing, but when I'm in a noisy environment like a bar, I can hear but can't understand what other people are saying. It's why I don't like going to bars/pubs with live performances or ambient music.
People think I'm bored or brooding because I'm not talking to anyone, but I just can't understand anything anyone says, so I can't participate in a conversation.
randlet|9 years ago
Have yourself tested! The quality of life improvement from a set of hearing aids is incredible!
edit: I was 31 when I was diagnosed, so don't think because you're young that you're immune. Generally hearing loss is very gradual so you don't really notice it. If you frequently have to ask people to repeat themselves though...
AceJohnny2|9 years ago
http://www.wsj.com/articles/cant-hear-in-noisy-places-its-a-...
(if the direct link from here gets you to the paywall, it looks like a referral thing. Oddly going to it form Twitter worked, though Incognito and Web didn't: https://mobile.twitter.com/Jieqian_Zhang/status/780613322097...)
HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637996
Direct link to the papers cited in the article: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24907
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812055/
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
(you can guess I also have interest in the topic...)
Isamu|9 years ago
Oddly enough, my wife has somewhat degraded hearing but she hears a lot better in noisy environments than I do. Must be like applying a filter to the noise, maybe she is losing the frequencies that cause confusion for me.
This will be an interesting product to try out - I hope there are more in the area of enhancing everyday interactions, rather than providing new distractions.
Enhanced vision is another area where I am hoping to see new products.
jseliger|9 years ago
They're also cheap enough that a lost pair is not catastrophic.
nilkn|9 years ago
jwr|9 years ago
rl3|9 years ago
Granted it doesn't stop me from being outgoing, but people having to almost shout or otherwise talk directly into my ear gets old after a while. I suspect it's not an issue with hearing itself so much as the brain processing the information.
In quiet conditions I can usually hear whispered conversations a good distance away.
acupofnope|9 years ago
I've been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder somewhat recently. Before the diagnosis, I had my hearing tested a couple of times over the course of my adult life but nothing was found. It was during my ASD diagnosis that I've learned that people on the spectrum may sometimes have sensory issues, and sometimes hearing is affected. It explained why I can't understand what people were saying in noisy environments where everyone else seemed to carry out conversations normally.
stcredzero|9 years ago
We ended up having a lot of arguments, because she'd say things to me, I'd tell her I couldn't understand what she was saying, then she'd refuse to talk louder but still hold me accountable for remembering what she said.
kumaraman|9 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
ChuckMcM|9 years ago
steamer25|9 years ago
gaius|9 years ago
codazoda|9 years ago
Maybe this is another reason people think I'm brooding. I can only hear the people directly next to me in a noisy environment; not the people on the other end of a table for example. I typically assumed they couldn't hear me either, but now I'm wondering.
santoriv|9 years ago
kolinko|9 years ago
Their hearing is perfectly fine, but they drift away a hundred times a minute.
You don't have to move a lot to have ADHD. Here is a fun test/explaination on how it works in adults: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iozAFIr3BEw#t=50
nkrisc|9 years ago
CorvusCrypto|9 years ago
Or if you don't want to use earplugs, just plug your ears when someone is talking to you. Same effect really.
tim333|9 years ago
I suffer a bit from tinnitus and as a result have taken to carrying earplugs for noisy environments. I find in addition to protecting my ears I can hear conversation better. I think basically the ears work better in the normal db range and don't function so well if overloaded. My kit, approximately:
Holder: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Large-Emergency-Cash-or-Pill-Keyri...
Wax ear plugs: http://www.boots.com/en/Boots-Muffle-Wax-Earplugs-5-Pairs-_1...
Wax is quite good because you can adjust the effect - put in loosely they don't block much, squish them down and they do. I also chop them down to fit which the packet advises against. I recommend for tinnitus avoidance if nothing else.
dpeck|9 years ago
I can more of less push through it at a pub and in other social situations but its extremely draining.
dacracot|9 years ago
intsunny|9 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King-Kopetzky_syndrome
baldfat|9 years ago
Now that I am lower I have ringing ears and lost the high frequency range of sound to a "slightly bellow level" and will probably never have to have hearing aids. My brain just couldn't figure out how to filter out all that noise.
tn13|9 years ago
I use to avoid drive-through, phone conversations etc. because there was always a 10% chance that everything I heard seemed like other person mumbling something. Medical help helped me correct the problem.
ghurtado|9 years ago
The problem is easily masked in a quiet environment, since your brain has more aural information to put the words together, but in a noisy environment, where many of the speech frequencies are cancelled by ambient sounds, you don't receive enough aural information.
mgv11|9 years ago
edit. As for these hearphones, would be interesting to test them, but dont think I've used them. Never seen the problem as a big thing. More like annoyance perhaps. And yes, I am cheap.
rubyfan|9 years ago
This looks like a new spin on an old concept though. Perhaps it's made more practical since we all carry phones now.
technofiend|9 years ago
randlet|9 years ago
* switch my hearing aids between 5 different programs depending on the environment.
* play "fractal" like tones to combat my tinnitus
* adjust the volume including muting the outside world
* play music from anything with a 3.5mm jack (bluetooth also available)
* hear calls from my phone
* probably more I'm forgetting
If it wasn't for the being hearing impaired part, having hearing aids is pretty cool :)
It looks like Bose is trying to bring this technology to a bigger market which is cool.
hinkley|9 years ago
I have wished to friends and to a couple people like me for a hearing aid for hyper-vigilant people. Something that turned down the entire world, except for human speech, by 10-20 dB. I have my fingers crossed that these Bose devices can be re-purposed for this, just by turning down the gain to near ambient, so I can finally have some fucking peace and quiet.
Then maybe I won't think these open seating environments are the worst development in software for the last twenty years...
j2bax|9 years ago
hughes|9 years ago
Florin_Andrei|9 years ago
What does that sound like?
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
bryanlarsen|9 years ago
Do you think they'd be worth getting just for the ambient noise cutting abilities alone? My daughter has complete hearing loss in one ear and normal functionality in the other. Normally she's fine, but in a crowd she's completely lost.
pacomerh|9 years ago
fillskills|9 years ago
_fs|9 years ago
Certified|9 years ago
An interesting side note is that you could 'hear' a very high pitched sound when using the device even though 50kHz is far outside the standard human hearing range. We still are not sure but think we were hearing a lower harmonic of the tone bouncing around the skull.
ogig|9 years ago
What worked for me was stop fighting and start loving it. Now it's a perma mantra. Some somatic malfunction that enables me to ear the hum inside of me or whatever poetry works for you. Try it maybe.
uf|9 years ago
I'm hearing a tinnitus for over 10 years now, so I know what it's like. :)
wyager|9 years ago
No. Tinnitus is not caused by a real sound. It occurs somewhere after the phase-erasing Fourier transform performed by the physical structure of the ear. If it were caused by a real sound, or the brain added sounds in the time space (rather than the frequency space), it would work. But neurons are not fast enough to handle time-domain sound processing, so they offload Fourier transformation to the ear and then work with the (presumably phaseless) frequency-domain representation.
suby|9 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yDCox-qKbk
It's not much and doesn't seem to work for everyone, but if you've been suffering from tinnitus for years, one minute is better than nothing.
logicallee|9 years ago
tinnitus is caused by people listening to music that is too loud. Music is too loud at most venues, if you are standing where you are meant to.
EDIT:
people don't like this comment, and point out that in many places inserts are available. All the same, the general clubs that I go to where I live, don't have them, and, more to the point, nobody else wears them. it's a social problem and perhaps a marketing problem. many bars / clubs are too loud and I as a consumer haven't been solicited to pay for a solution on-site. (even if this exists.) others I'm with don't wear anything either.
The responses here have convinced me that I likely should invest in some and bring them with me - but I don't like that I'm the only one doing so, and it seems kind of anal. i'm just being honest about how I feel. it would be easier if they were more readily available / being sold, and if everyone were using them.
I like to be cool and do the same thing everyone else does. just being honest.
colorcoded|9 years ago
web007|9 years ago
benarent|9 years ago
stephendicato|9 years ago
newman314|9 years ago
I've tried it and it seems to work at least for a while for me. YMMV.
ajryan|9 years ago
It also looks like more specific NMDA agonists are being developed as a treatment? http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
tim333|9 years ago
AWildDHHAppears|9 years ago
[deleted]
KaiserPro|9 years ago
since then it's been a habit. These look nice and all, but basically all you really need are ear plugs.
http://www.thesafetysupplycompany.co.uk/p/449062/howard-leig...
comfy, snug and 32db (depending on version) of attenuation. That means that you can go to a loud gigs (95db) without the risk of tinitus.
same goes for bars. Loud noises are draining, have your hearing shattered by someone shouting in your ears is a pain.
Yes, if you choose the colourful ones its obvious. there are natural colours.
Bose makes a lot of song and dance about how you can adjust for noise, your ears do that already. The advantage of normal ear plugs is that you still retain some of the dimensionality that earphones loose.
Sadly I've had a child, and all that shrill screaming has basically killed off 10db of sensitivity of my hearing. but I'm 10db up form most of my musician friends
dmalvarado|9 years ago
"Musician's earplugs", so-to-speak, they attenuate all frequencies more evenly than standard foam plugs would. In effect just turning down the volume of the world a bit, not muffling it.
I don't have meniere's, but do get drained by bars and loud music. I hate to seem lame by wanting to leave a party/bar early, so I bought a pair for myself recently. They're just fantastic. Highly recommend.
owlninja|9 years ago
adrianN|9 years ago
musesum|9 years ago
I am the ideal customer: some hearing loss from my VJ days, but still appreciate frequency response. I render all my music at 192Khz.
Basic hearing aids suck at frequency response. Most drop off at around 8KHz Meanwhile, Apple has created a pipeline for hearing aid. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201466 I haven't used it.
I often work out of noisy cafes. So, I wear Bose Quiet Comfort 20 earbuds. If I forget, I will go back home to fetch them. Have even taken the QC 20's to public concerts to use the noise cancellation feature instead of earplugs.
sna1l|9 years ago
If they can actually land a product with a truly wireless experience, that would be awesome!
ElijahLynn|9 years ago
"...and people always talk much louder to compensate for the noise. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to hear the server without any extra effort..."
And initially was wondering how he got an audio feed to his server in a restaurant and then was like "Why would he want to listen to his server". And then realized that there are human servers in restaurants.
Florin_Andrei|9 years ago
afshinmeh|9 years ago
PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000] [1040] Too many connections in lock_may_be_available() (line 167 of /var/app/current/hearphones/includes/lock.inc).
olegkikin|9 years ago
mike-cardwell|9 years ago
h4nkoslo|9 years ago
It works extremely well in that form factor, basically like having Superman ears. Conversations are audible, you can turn up the sensitivity to where you can hear footsteps clearly in a house, and gunshots are reduced to the level of, eg, a heavy book falling off a shelf.
https://smile.amazon.com/Howard-Leight-Amplification-Electro...
nkrumm|9 years ago
borisjabes|9 years ago
falcolas|9 years ago
vec|9 years ago
Because of the way your ears function, the vast majority of people who have hearing impairments have them at specific frequency ranges. Hearing aids do amplify sound somewhat, but they mostly work by pitch shifting voices away from your personal weak spots to wherever your hearing is still strongest. They also do some signal processing to differentiate voice-like noises from other sounds, amplify the voice, and actually mute the non-voice sounds.
For people who have some hearing loss, blanket amplification can be counterproductive and dangerous. Turning up the volume across the board doesn't help at all with differentiating signal from background noise, and can cause what hearing you do have left to degrade much faster than it otherwise might due to the increased stress placed on the ear.
derekp7|9 years ago
Ciantic|9 years ago
Broken_Hippo|9 years ago
And folks would be interested for similar reasons. Insurance might not cover the testing that often or the device itself, for instance, or someone might not think they have the time to go to that doctor. Maybe it is only a problem every once in a while, and so on.
And like cheap reading glasses, it might not be a perfect solution, but a solution nonetheless.
stcredzero|9 years ago
Moshe_Silnorin|9 years ago
gnicholas|9 years ago
DasIch|9 years ago
If hearing aids are glasses, these are binoculars/telescopes/microscopes.
curiousDog|9 years ago
mikestew|9 years ago
Wow, I feel so special, and all I did was click a link on HN. This sounds like the Bose version of those cheap late-night "as seen in TV" amplifiers. Yeah, Bose is overpriced for what you get, but at least their stuff is if decent quality. Dunno, after too many years of standing in front of a Marshall stack, be it my own or other's, I could see myself interested in this.
gilstroem|9 years ago
It may still work for emails, because people might be unsure of how many mails are actually sent out, but this is cringe in 2016.
mschip|9 years ago
deckar01|9 years ago
farnsworth|9 years ago
pixelcloud|9 years ago
andy318|9 years ago
cvigoe|9 years ago
kriro|9 years ago
e40|9 years ago
scandox|9 years ago
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/09/how-coughing-up-a-piece-of-...
6stringmerc|9 years ago
It's a very interesting condition to have, because sometimes certain sounds will jump out at me in ways that wouldn't bother most other people - for example, the newest GMC TV commercials on US TV have this marimba chime thing that kicks in at the very end and it's a purposefully off-tempo, non-harmonized cacophony that drives me effing bonkers.
draw_down|9 years ago
sprokolopolis|9 years ago
People who hear in stereo seem to isolate particular sounds (like a voice) much easier from background noise without any/much conscious thought; whereas, I have to consciously focus on filtering out the ambient noise. Having 2 audio channels seems to allow for a sort of spacial filtering/differentiation to pinpoint particular streams of sounds. I have found that turning my head in space allows me some ability to differentiate foreground/background noise by comparing their relative change in volumes as my ear changes direction. That is more fit for deciphering sounds coming from a distance and not helpful in the case of a close conversation. If I am having trouble with a conversation in a noisy setting I normally revert to lip-reading. Unfortunately lip-reading makes it difficult to read body language and facial expressions.
As a young kid I felt a bit left out of the experience of stereo music. I experimented with setting up several of my family's radios around my room and tuning their equalizers differently to roughly separate parts of the music. By moving and turning through the room, I was able to experience the music in a slightly more spacial way.
joel-stages|9 years ago
hearingguy|9 years ago
daenney|9 years ago
kabes|9 years ago
musesum|9 years ago
My guess is that the new buds will allow the iPhone as a 3rd microphone, with Apple's "Live Listen"
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
aagoldin|9 years ago
FreedomToCreate|9 years ago
bsmith|9 years ago
andy_ppp|9 years ago
sgs1370|9 years ago
sundvor|9 years ago
This looks like an excellent product, and great work to their engineers.
jluk|9 years ago
cracell|9 years ago
I have trouble hearing in noisy environments. When I was young I was diagnosed with an auditory processing problem so I assume it's related to that.
When I meet with someone in a noisy environment I just accept that I'm only going to understand every other word that someone says. Which leads to a lot of smiling and nodding blankly.
I know very expensive hearing aids could handle this for me but it's not a big enough problem for me to check into that route. However if this was $150 bucks or so I might get some. Though I expect the price tag will be more like $600.
abecedarius|9 years ago
6stringmerc|9 years ago
Oh, and if there comes a time when there are YouTube/Vine videos of jerks coming up behind people wearing these and screaming and/or otherwise messing with them, well, I wouldn't be surprised. Not that I'd approve, mind you. But would I laugh? No comment.
raz32dust|9 years ago
Today, people who wore glasses or had to wear hearing aid were those with vision and hearing problems. We are moving to an era where we would voluntarily wear visual/hearing aid all the time because they enhance our natural abilities so much that it would be hard to do without it. We are now starting to augment the most basic senses with technology, in a way that is affordable enough that everyone will be doing it. In that sense, this is the dawn of an era of bioelectronic super humans.
pluglus|9 years ago
pbhjpbhj|9 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_induction_loop
fapjacks|9 years ago
blauditore|9 years ago
Out of curiosity, is this an amost-hug of death or something else broken? (I know nothing about Drupal.)
Tade0|9 years ago
SparkyMcUnicorn|9 years ago
mike-cardwell|9 years ago
gravypod|9 years ago
Tade0|9 years ago
bshimmin|9 years ago
callesgg|9 years ago
If one presses the passthrogh button it has a somewhat enhancing effect.
bks|9 years ago
Mankhool|9 years ago
LyalinDotCom|9 years ago
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
logicallee|9 years ago
but imagine if I could rent some kind of insert that actually lets me talk with others who also have theirs (because it filters using also a microphone.) how awesome would that be.
clubs and concerts, dance halls etc suck. waaay too loud.
tlb|9 years ago
I wear these at concerts: https://www.amazon.com/Eargasm-Fidelity-Earplugs-Musicians-M.... A fairly flat 12 dB drop across the whole spectrum. Everything sounds normal, just not excessively loud.
daenney|9 years ago
Maybe you should consciously make a different choice, such as bring ear plugs with you. There's plenty of brands that come in a container that fit easily on a keychain so they're not forgotten.
leoedin|9 years ago
Probably the best way to have a conversation with someone in a loud club is to stick your finger in your ear. Once you've sealed the hole completely, you can hear them fine!
Brakenshire|9 years ago
beepboopbeep|9 years ago
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
disposablezero|9 years ago
dotnetisnotdead|9 years ago
I'm sure I could probably read up more, but if these work it's definitely a "shut up and take my money" situation for me. I'm about as ADD as it gets and I have a really hard time when there are multiple conversations going and I try to listen to them all.
_glass|9 years ago
WhitneyLand|9 years ago
TACIXAT|9 years ago
pvdebbe|9 years ago
lancewiggs|9 years ago
Coincoin|9 years ago
gesman|9 years ago
Ok. Duh?
Why so many points to this story?
brak1|9 years ago
kozak|9 years ago
swimfar|9 years ago
oAlbe|9 years ago
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
themihai|9 years ago
chuckreynolds|9 years ago
ElijahLynn|9 years ago
pkstn|9 years ago
lucasgonze|9 years ago
agumonkey|9 years ago
known|9 years ago
imranq|9 years ago
0xCMP|9 years ago
ZenoArrow|9 years ago
Basically it appears to be a combination of noise cancelling and directional microphones so that you hear more of what you're pointed towards. If you want to get a better feel for how these devices could work, I'd recommend taking a look into directional microphones.
tbarbugli|9 years ago
vadym909|9 years ago
doublevea|9 years ago
Neliquat|9 years ago
lobster_johnson|9 years ago
I use the QC20 earbuds, which are even better at noise canceling than the QC15 headphones. As a developer, they are my number one tool to get into the zone.
They're also very calming on airplanes and elsewhere with a lot of low- or high-frequency noise.
I have tried a number of noise canceling headsets, but Bose is the best, something reviews also confirm.
(Audio quality is also in the top range, according to me. Not quite as good as my Sennheiser HD25, but close enough.)
exhilaration|9 years ago
aagoldin|9 years ago
[deleted]
pkstn|9 years ago
[deleted]
tooFastFuckYou|9 years ago
[deleted]
artur_makly|9 years ago
It's like an fine-tuned harmonic anti-sound barrier that turns on automatically after 4 secs.. Wifephones please.
soared|9 years ago
> I was with my husband at Smokey Bones
What is that?
> …The room was very noisy as it always is there because they have tv's going and lots of music and people always talk much louder to compensate for the noise.
I'll let this one slide
> I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to hear the server without any extra effort order my meal with smooth going.
With smooth going eh?
> My husband and my conversation was not strained
Glad to hear your husband were comfortable