I went kayaking with my kids the other day and removed my hearing aids in fear of falling in the water. So I had a very hard and frustrating time hearing my kids talking to me.
Has anyone ever considered using the hearing functionality of the Airpods Pro 2 for a backup set? I don’t mind losing or damaging a $200 pair of earbuds. I understand I won’t have the same type of hearing or understanding that I would get from hearing aids but maybe this would be better than nothing.
Also if I were to do this can I add the airpods to my iphone as a hearing devise and flip back an forth between my hearing aids and airpods for bluetooth?
Thank you for any input.
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Yes, a few people here- me included- do that. They’re not recognised as hearing devices as such on the iphone but flipping between them and aids is seamless. The secureness of the fit may be an issue for some people.
I have a pair of AirPods Pro 2 as well. I find using it in the Transparency mode as a hearing device is very lacking for me. I can hear the lows OK but the AirPods Pro 2’s amplification on the high (to compensate for my severe high frequency loss) is abysmal. There are YouTube videos of HCPs testing out the AirPods Pro 1 in the Transparency mode, confirming that the amplification in the highs for the Transparency mode (which is the mode that you would use as a hearing aids substitute) is there but lacking, only suitable for people with mild hearing only.
Your hearing is moderate and fairly flat, so the AirPods Pro 2 may work for you more easily in terms of providing you with just flat amplification. But the issue is that while you’re able to increase the streaming volume to a fairly loud level, the max volume setting in the Transparency mode may still not be as loud or loud enough for you to use it as a hearing device replacement.
Like @d_Wooluf said, you can flip back and forth between the hearing aids and the AirPods just fine. I even use both at the same time sometimes, believe it or not. I use the AIrPods for listening to music because of the exceptional bass it can deliver, but because the Transparency Mode is not sufficient for my high frequency hearing loss, I can also wear my RIC hearing aids inside my canal then put the AirPods outside over it, and I can now hear both the streaming content from the AirPods Pro 2, AND the environmental sounds with my hearing aids, in parallel.
If the AirPods Pro 2 work out for you as a temporary hearing aid substitute on your sports outing, they sell necklace tied to the stems of the pods and wear around your neck on Amazon, so that you wouldn’t lose a pod if it slips out. You can probably do something similar for your hearing aids in case they fall out during your sporting event. But if you fall into the water, then that’s another story.
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Thanks for asking this question.
I’m considering this as well.
DaveL
Toronto
My Jabra Enhance Pros are water resistant (IP68). I’ve been caught in rainstorms while bicycling with them and have not had any issues. My understanding is that most modern HA can survive brief immersions in water.
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Here is my follow up to this post.
I did purchase a pair of Airpod Pro 2’s.
First of all for music they sound unbelievable, I’m so used to music with my hearing aids with poor low frequencies it’s nice to get some bass in music.
I entered my audiogram into ios accessibility and activated transparency mode. At first I was pleasantly surprised as I could hear little things, like keyboard clicks etc. But then I tried conversation and voice was difficult to hear.
I tried a phone call using the Airpod Pro’s and the volume needed to be cranked right up to hear.
My hearing loss is pretty flat around 60db so maybe that is beyond the range the Airpods can help.
I thought I would try something to boost voice so I re-entered my audiogram into accessibility but this time I manually adjusted all the data. I added 20db to each individual setting so if it was 60 I changed it to 80, 65 to 85 and so on.
I did notice it helped slightly with the voice but still not the best.
I spent the week at a Disney hotel with the kids so it was a good week to try this out. I liked using the Airpods while hanging by the pool without fear of losing my hearing aids and just kept them on when going to the restaurant or lobby. Voice is definitely not good enough to consider using these all the time but they did assist and were better than not having a hearing aid.
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I really appreciate you following up here. I’ve considered doing the same thing. My case…I finally have my HA’s set up so I can hear better. It’s taken a long time. Now I wish that music sounded better when I’m trying to entertain myself. I think that your observations are a great help.
Dave
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Thought I would add some comments to this thread, having used my new AirPods Pro 2 for the last couple of months… they are amazing in all the ways previously mentioned, plus for me have been a life saver as far as eliminating background chaos that can truly be crazy-making. Shopping at Costco? No problem. Working out at the gym? Happy quiet time. Live music jams? Music comes through clear, as well as conversations with those sitting close to me. Everything sounds natural, not doctored by high frequency transposition, etc. I entered my audiogram in the iPhone Health App and fussed with every setting I could find for the AirPods, and while I may try to tweak some frequencies, on the whole they work amazingly well.
Unaided, my low frequency hearing isn’t too bad, but ski slope drop makes speech of high female voices incomprehensible. My KS10s work well in many situations, but the last couple of adjustments have made everything worse. They seem to lack the ability to selectively damp down noise that I would rather not hear so loudly… AC for example, crowds in stores… no matter what adjustments I make in the EasyLine app. Either everything gets quieter (speech included) or everything gets louder, speech is louder but words just run together. Makes no difference using closed domes; not sure my ears would tolerate anything larger. I’m tempted to go DIY, but not sure the KS10s themselves have the ability to perform the selective noise cancellation I’m looking for.
Many thanks to all here for their insightful comments, which have helped me a great deal over the last months and years to understand hearing loss so much better!
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Thanks so much for posting. My audiogram is similar to yours. You give me great hope.
About the KS10’s–I had horrible problems with the audiologist that provided mine. Hindsight…he didn’t know how to set them up. He encouraged that I learn how to use the myPhonak APP. There’s a setting there named DYNAMIC that adjusts compression. If I set it high to the right it emphasized soft sounds, and reduced loud sounds. The other thing I adjusted was the speech zone for the directional microphones. There is a setting called CLARITY that changes (boosts) mid and high frequencies.
Hope this helps you get more out of the KS10’s. I think you have an app too.
Finally, I changed and found a remarkable hearing aid practioner who had worked for Sonova. He found two mistakes. The dispensing audiologist had not set the domes properly. That made the HA’s work terribly. And he did not enable a setting that allows the two hearing aids to communicate. That wrecked the performance of the hearing aids. With those two simple changes my hearing aids work.
The do it yourself approach would work for me if I had more skill. the Phonak software is called “TARGET”. there are two reports that are magnificent. I hadn’t seen them until I met the new practitioner. They are “User Report”, and “Pro Report”. I now can see what’s turned on, and what the settings are. All my previous audiologists must have thought I didn’t need to know that. It has set my mind at ease.
Now my hearing aids (Paradise P90’s; same as yours) work! They are amazing.
Dave
I tried Airpods2 Pro in transparency mode and found that there was a slight time delay. I found on-line that Apple’s spec is 126 ms, which is only an eighth of a second, but for playing classical guitar it was disturbing. I bought them through Amazon and returned them after 1 day, but there was some hassle I won’t go into here.
Yes, I can understand why the latency would be very obvious for playing guitar or piano or virtually any percussion type instrument, because as soon as you hit the notes, your brain expect to hear the results right away, and your brain is just way too fast for something like a Bluetooth device to keep up with.
For listening to sounds not generated by yourself but by something/someone else, then you don’t know when it’s supposed to start, so your brain wouldn’t be as picky, so therefore the latency becomes acceptable.
The 126 ms figure is for Bluetooth latency. It shouldn’t affect how you hear yourself play guitar. I couldn’t find any figures for latency from the microphones. I’m not saying it’s not there, though I’ve never noticed it. We all have different sensitivites.
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