Apple Airpods Pro as hearing aids

Hearing Aids
#27

I am interested in the success of AirPod Pro’s for hearing but the feature that I see as potentially useful is not mentioned. Transparency is a feature that allows to hear direct ambient sound and voices direct through the pods. How is that working for folks that have purchased pods? Also, I’m connected to my wired pods for phone conversation use. How are AirPod Pro’s for phone use?

Another long term possibility for some grows from the acceptance of the pods being worn in public spaces, restaurants and even, maybe, at work. Our HA producers have in their business a requirement to be “invisible”. As white ear things become more and more accceptable the HA companies have the potential of a larger footprint to work with to create their products with better features. Yeah! Do you agree? All input is appreciated. Speak up. Thanks

#28

I work in a large professional environment and quite a few people walk around all the time with the white sticks dangling out of their ears. I think it’s funny that I enjoy the same benefits as them in a much more discrete fashion. I’m speculating (as usual) but I think the only reason that Apple AirPods and others aren’t smaller is that in order for them to be stuck way inside the ear canal like a hearing aid, they may have to be considered a medical device. That’s just speculation though.

#30

I believe AirPods come with transparency enabled.

#31

Yes, i didn’t read it properly. Sorry, I have deleted the post. With transparency it’ll catch all noise around us. So the focus on speech in noisy environment can’t be achieved in transparency mode.
Have to test both active noise cancellation & transparency mode in an Apple store.

#32

The transparency mode doesn’t help hearing speech; it just lets in more more sound than when the pods are turned off so it does less to block speech (and all other noise). It’s a good way to listen to your your iPhone (music, calls, whatever) and still have some surrounding sound come through. Since my hearing is close to normal at lower frequencies at least I can hear if someone is trying to talk to me. But mostly I use the full noise cancellation so I can enjoy music or broadcasts while walking the dogs without interference from background noise such as traffic, playground sounds and even an occasional helicopter. (I do have to keep a closer eye on the dogs, though.)

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#33

Just replaced my Costco Resound wireless HAs with the AirPod Pros running in transparency mode. For me, better sound quality, some other tech advantages and of course, the price. Current disadvantages are, more visible, battery life (about 5 hours for me but they charge quickly) and, I have to crank the Pod volume up pretty high. I am 68 and have about 70% hearing in my “good” ear and virtually none in the other, from Ménière’s disease. This is exciting for me, especially with the sound quality.

There are a few settings you have to tweak, via an iPhone running IOS 14.x

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#34

I’ve read quite a lot on using AirPods Pro as hearing aid, but once setup is hearing aid feature on by default or do I specifically need to enable it?

#35

There isn’t a hearing aid feature per se. There’s a Live Listen feature that you can turn on, but then you are listening to the sound as it’s captured by your iPhone mic and streamed to your AirPods or any other headset that supports Live Listen. It might be useful in a noisy restaurant setting with your iPhone placed in the center of the table or close to a person talking.

I personally haven’t found the feature all that useful.

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#36

Thanks for info. So the AirPods are always in a “hearing aid” mode?

#37

No, AirPods are not always in a hearing aid mode. As I said, you have to turn on the Live Listen feature while wearing the AirPods. With that feature off, they are regular earbuds.

#38

Live listen through iphone mic? It’s just a joke. :slight_smile:

#39

I use Live Listen often and like it. I set iPhone directly in front of the TV sound system (not the main TV I watch that uses TV Adapter) and the sound streams directly to my hearing aids. Good for news and dialog. I also turn it on and place next to speaker on another iPhone for family phone calls. Excellent for that purpose. I used it for Doctor’s appt and it was better than nothing considering masks and no lip reading. It has uses and benefits.
Noisy restaurant - it would pick up all the noise / sounds, not the speech.
So maybe Live Listen would be useful for streaming to AirPods in these situations. That said, if you need hearing aids, AirPods are not a substitute for hearing aids.

#40

I’m still confused. Much has been said about AirPods Pro as a substitute hearing aid. I agree the Live Listen feature doesn’t seem useful. So how do you enable the “hearing aid” mode? Do you need a hearing aid app designed for the AirPods Pro?

#41

EDIT: Based on the news of the firmware update and the introduction of conversation mode I’'ve removed my original reply. While I don’t think AirPods Pros are a substitute for hearing aids with those beyond a moderate loss, this new feature could likely help a lot of people.

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#42

There is now. I just posted this in the other AirPods thread but in case it helps I am posting it here too —

The latest AirPods Pro firmware update to 4A400 (and maybe needs iOS 15 on phone?) makes the microphone pick up speech directly in front of you (ie not using the Bluetooth connection). I have very variable hearing loss and my hearing currently is about as good as it gets. I find the AirPods alone are as good or better than my current Phonak BTE hearing aids. (Actually because I have the “thin tubes” I can put the AirPods in while wearing the aids so in principle both should be doing something.)

#43

I thought of this exchange when I saw the news and updated the firmware on my AirPod Pros. Good news.

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#44

They are not working through the hearing aids but as a ‘substitute’*. It’s in Settings/Accessibility/Audio Visual/Headphone Accommodations/On .

*really more for people who have little if any loss but want to hear ambient conversations while using AirPods for phone etc.

#45

I’ve had AirPods Pro for a few weeks now. I have latest “conversation mode” firmware as well. The live listen mode might be useful for listen only, but if to hold a conversation using it worse than no hearing aid at all because of echo you get from other peoples voices and yours. If there is any way to eliminate the echo I would like to hear about it. I’ve tried various combinations of noise cancellation, transparency and background sound to no avail.

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#46

I tried conversation mode, and as I understand it that mode only works in in conjunction with transparency mode.

#47

Definitely didn’t work for me. I’ve got normal to moderate low freq loss sloping to severe high freq loss. I had airpods pro for a year already and a couple months ago saw that they might be used this way. That was just before I got my “real” hearing aids. Was still deciding on hearing aids, so figured, why not try. But to use the airPods like that you must run a hearing test using a specific third-party app, and the airpods import the results. Well, when I got to the high freq part of the test I could not hear anything at any vol of that test freq, so of course I did not click the “hear it now” button, and the app complained I was not participating and canceled the test. Kept doing that. And you cannot proceed after that. So yeah, does not work if you’ve got a lot of hearing loss at any frequency–preliminary test won’t let you proceed.