Bringing back analog hearing aids

Hearing Aids
#28

I’m going to speculate a little here with what I know about consumer products, so please correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t know a lot about the analog HA landscape. But on general principles:

Without using an ASIC (custom chip), the analog circuitry will be relatively large and power hungry. Maybe there are analog hearing aid chips available, but if not, I don’t think there’d be enough of a market to justify the cost in making a new one.

In other words, to make a comparable analog HA, with 10-20 channels of EQ, it would be difficult and expensive without custom chips.

And you would just have fixed EQ, maybe some sound level compression (nothing fancy like frequency compression). MAYBE some adaptive EQ based on ambient noise/sounds.

Can anyone list feature sets of late-model analog HA’s?

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#29

In which HA do you understand better the group conversation? I mean digital or analog. What model of HA do you wear now?

#30

For group conversations, I generally prefer analog – I find the processing more natural. There are sometimes very specific situations in which digital may work better, such as particularly noisy restaurants.

I currently wear digital Starkey ITEs. I’ve sampled many others and have yet to find one that can compare to analog for me.

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#31

Interestingly, some companies have begun marketing trimmer digital hearing aids as “analog-like” and touting their natural sounding properties. So there is at least some recognition that the market for these exists, but it is not coupled with an understanding of the actual qualities of analog sound that cause some people to prefer it.

#32

I have reached out to multiple manufacturers on this question but have never gotten a straight answer. I would be pleased if someone with direct knowledge could reply on the question of pricing analog chips at this time. Of course, the lack of availability is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: it was due to the decisions of the manufacturers to stop producing analog hearing aids that the relevant components are now more difficult to source.

#33

Maybe you can’t find a good fitter, so you are troubled with digitals. I remember when I first got for digitals Widex.
For almost 2 years no one could fit them properly for me. Finally I found very good fitter who made my HA good and pleasant for me. I asked him what he changed in them. He said the filters, whatever.
Widex had clear and expressive sound. When I changed them for Phonak, well, the sound in them was less clear and a little subdued in comparison with Widex, but understanding of the speech increased a lot.

#34

Another point that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in this thread is that with digital you can change the response curve just by changing the program, but with analogue you’d have to change the values of resistors and capacitors to change the response. (I’m in the process of designing a headphone amplifier to try and mimic the response of my aids using analogue circuits.) I don’t know how they did it before digital came along - whether they were made to specification - seems unlikely - or whether the audiologist fitted you with the best match out of a selection with different responses. I might ask my audiologist friend when I see her in a week or so’s time.

#35

I’m sure they didn’t adjust the analog HA’s by soldering resistors and capacitors. They either had trimmer potentiometers they could adjust with a little tool or else the chips used digital pots that could be programmed with software and a communication link.

#36

Haggis’s response is right as far as I recall. These adjustments were not necessarily the most precise as far as being tuned to one’s loss profile, but they did produce good sound.

Relatedly, and in response to wegierka, the fitting certainly matters, and not every audiologist has the necessary understanding of sound to ensure a good fitting. That said, even the best digital filters available are still limited as far as being able to reproduce an acoustic sound wave. So no matter how well the digital aid is fitted, the loss of information remains, and your brain knows it. At least mine does.

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#37
#38

Gonna put my uneducated 2 cents in here, I have an electronics background. There are limits to what manipulations you can do to input based on physical size. Sound is adjusted by capacitors and inductors. Yes you can have potentiometers after the frequencies are separated using caps inductors but those take space. Capacitors wear out and fail. Also the adjustment tools would be very small. Basically I think you would get a manufacturer that made 10 of the most common hearing profiles locked into the circuit and all you could adjust is volume. If they allowed user/audi adjustment you lose water resistance. The battery life would be much worse and HA size much larger. With digital you sample in input and convert to digital. Send it through a microprocessor to apply a plethora of filters then send it back out the an amplifier/speaker. Not perfect by any means but allows manufacturers to make a single device that works for almost anyone. Not perfect for anyone but works. I’m not arguing for or against but for ME I would prefer the small device that just amplifies the frequencies i need and lasts a week on a battery.

I could see a manufacturer making a kiosk like shoe inserts where it shows the autograph on the package and you pick the one that best matches yours. Say $99 for hearing amplifier but there are 10 models to chose from. No adjustment except volume.

#39

Good try, but inductors haven’t been used in AF (audio frequency) tuned circuits for about 40 years. They’re too big and bulky. And ceramic SMT capacitors now never dry out or wear out. Op-amp type filters are tuned by adjusting resistors with fixed capacitors.

Here’s an example of a 4-channel “box”-type hearing aid with modern SMT circuitry and variable-resistor settings.

http://www.thetaeng.com/projects/hearing-aid.html

Here is a 1950’s BTE hearing aid (analog).

http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Transistor%20(Ear)/BTE/Zenith/info/zenithdiplomat56.htm

Can’t really see most of the electronics in the picture. But judging by this next article, 1950’s and 60’s era devices contained only a handful of transistors so programming must have been primitive and set by fixed resistors and capacitors.

Explore the waynesworld articles. They’re really interesting. Somewhere they said early analog hearing aids had no adjustments. I have seen analog HA’s with a half-dozen micro tuning controls behind a door, but can’t find any pictures of them now.

On a more psycho-acoustic level, here’s a good discussion on analog-vs-digital from the haringtracker site. Note what some say about compression. Maybe that’s a factor in people who can’t solerate digital HA’s.

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#40

I can understand why people just want what they want. I am new to HAs so I can’t compare what the sound was like with analog. I was approaching it from a strictly manufacturing direction. I completely feel that they could make a very nice analog for the INSANE prices they charge for HAs. Yes I know research and development costs etc. Simply put, they charge $4000+ because they can. If their were enough market to make it profitable someone would be doing it. If they can make a large profit margin with digital and smaller profit margin with analog and sales of analog would be small comparatively then you can’t blame them for not bothering. Even with todays technology I still feel like the HA would be much larger if it were audi adjustable and good quality sound.

Let’s be honest. It’s the bells and whistles that allow marketers to promote them. if you eliminate all the gadgets, it will be harder to sell. That doesn’t make it right or wrong just a fact. Only 1 out of a hundred could explain the difference between digital and analog in any meaningful manner so they fall prey to the marketing hype.

My hearing isn’t too bad. I have trouble understanding spoken words but I can usually catch enough to make sense of the conversation. With my loss and currently set HAs the only quirk I ever hear is that more pure tones resonate. If I were to whistle a single note it flutters. Hope that makes sense. To be completely honest, I am amazed that they can input, process and output the modified sound in real-time without a perceived lag.

#41

This thread is quite interesting. If an analog aid was available, I might buy it to listen to music and wear it in the home, but as soon as I had to engage with the world, the digitals would go back in.

I have a severe loss now. With analogs:

  • I would struggle to hear in the car
  • I would find it impossible to converse in a noisy environment - this includes pubs, clubs, canteens, any gathering where there are multiple talkers and a general hub bub of noise.
  • I would find it difficult to converse in the street, as car noise would drown out conversation
  • I would find it impossible to converse on a mobile phone
  • Unless a landline had a T switch, it would be very difficult to converse
  • I wouldn’t be able to listen to music with headphones, as they would squeal

So? Sorry guys (and gals) - no thanks. No revisionism from me. And I wore them for around 23 years.

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#42

I agree with what you say in principle but the margins are not that high. These are FDA certified devices, and I’ve learned something about that this year in my startup. For each new model they come out with, a hearing aid company spends about 10 million dollars and a full year of thousands of pages of risk-mitigation recordkeeping, in addition to the microelectronics development costs. And they release it into a competitive, relatively small niche market.

I got my M-70R’s for $2000 each. That’s not too bad. Did they make a healthy profit? Yes, big time. Are they stealing like that asshole who raised the price of insuling 1000%? No. They’re doing an honest business.

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#43

Somewhere I have read that the cost of a digital hearing aid, at the factory shipping door, is $150 each.

#44

Don’t even get me started

Was that cash price or with insurance?

I would have expected about half that but interesting.

#45

I will have a look for the source, but I recall there was a range. My memory says that $150 was said to be the median.

#46

OK, you may not like that or agree with it, but that’s what it is.

Cash.

I wouldn’t argue that. But the cost of producing it is much, much more than the cost at the factory shipping door.

Do you engineer and produce consumer products? Do you engineer and produce medical devices? I’ve done both now.

#47

The factory production costs still don’t represent the R&D and FDA Cert costs.

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