Hope this gets posted since it’s a game changer and possibly very bad news for HA manufacturers. Unless the likes of Phonak, Oticon, Starkey, Widex and all the rest see thee “Forest For the Trees”.
Going forward you’re going to start seeing HA in glasses or shall I say glass frames. Now if you don’t wear glasses but wear HA you can ignore following. But if you do wear glasses and have a mild to mid range hearing loss soon you will have the option to wear glasses to hear better. Because there are glasses now coming out with HA capability in eye glass temples or temple tip.
So why is all the above a game changer? Because probably 99% of all HA users with a mild to mid-range hearing loss would take glasses with aid built in (if work as promised) over any aid you stick in your ear. Let me count the reasons why,
Smart glasses with HA are now looking like normal glasses
That means no need to wear HA which freaks out most people or those under age fifty.
With Glass aids you no longer have to stick anything in your ear. You don’t need to worry about impacted ear wax. You don’t have to worry about your dog chewing your hearing aids. You don’t need to worry about ill fitting ear molds or cone like receiver popping out. Etc.
Sorry if this rubs some HA dealers here wrong but in the next two to three years you might see OTC HA going totally bye-bye and replaced by OTC AR/Smart glasses with hearing aids built in. And when I say AR/smart glasses I’m talking Meta, Samsung, Apple, etc. and not current aid manufacturers.
Sure there will be a aid market or those with mid range loss to profound hearing loss, but as AR/Smart glasses develop you can say good by to OTC aids that deal with mild to mid range loss. It’s coming.
Well i wear glasses, wire rim glasses that is, i have severe hearing loss. Just like I have read about seeing speech to text showing in tinny screens it the lenses of the glasses. It would not work for me my eyesight is to bad. These are all old ideas that are becoming back. I can remember many years ago. Big thick black plastic glasses with the hearing aids build in. The frames were ugly and only mens frames. They aids were almost as usless.
Perhaps there will be a market for glasses with hearing aids built in but I think people around the wearer of those devices will be annoyed. If there is nothing to go into the ear, others will also hear the audio from the glasses.
Not is they are bone conductive, then they will vibrate the skull behind the ear for people to hear. I have never worn that type of device and have been told it will not work for my severe hearing loss. And due to my poor eyesight I have to change glasses for different environments and different uses. Dark sun glasses for outdoors, glasses for TV and glasses for reading. Sure i also have what is considered to be all around glasses that really don’t work for anything.
As @cvkemp said they will use bone conduction (which may be OK for some and not others).
But probably a bigger reason people will be uncomfortable around smart glasses is they will have cameras and recording ability. I don’t really want to be interacting with people who could be recording video and audio at anytime…(yes a phone can do it as well but smart glasses make it even easier to record unobtrusively)
Nope. There will be stand alone Smart glasses that only do one thing. Help you hear better. There also will be incoming sound adjustment and ways to channel someone talking directly to your middle/inner ear.
There might also be away to combine Smart glasses with future hearing aids. Think of the possibilities with additional space (HA space) offered in glass frames and ear temple. HA have always been limited in performance due to lack of size. You throw in good looking glass frames and it opens up a whole new world.
Bet five years from now you’ll see more HA’s build into glass frames (for those with mid to mid range hearing loss), then strictly in your ear hearing aids. Time to see the forest for the trees guys.
Smart glasses is just another video game that distract people from the real world
Just another means to turn humans into people that can no longer think for themselves.
This is the same guy who posted a month or so ago about “hearing/captioning” glasses. He kept insisting they will eliminate HA, and the other 99% of us explained patiently why they won’t. Yes, they will be amazing, but no they won’t eliminate hearing aids.
Now he’s back, and I have better things to do than rehash his tired old diatribes.
I stand corrected evidently the ones you reference use air conduction (directional speakers embedded in the frame, near your ears). I wonder how well that works (especially in noisy environments) and how much noise leakage there is…
Any way I am keeping my contact lenses and Eargo’s
Again off topic- but there are potentially useful use cases where people need to read instructions while working on machinery etc. Used this way AR Glasses are just another productivity tool. I think you have said previously you were in IT. Well AR Glasses are just another computer display (more useful in some situations than a monitor). Many cars have head-up displays which are useful rather than having to look down at screens, planes (commercial and military) have been using head-up displays for years. Just think of AR Glasses as a head-up display you bring with you which can be useful in many engineering, medical, mechanical etc work environments.
If you were talking about VR Glasses and everyone disappearing into Virtual Worlds rather than going out and interacting with real people in the real world I could agree with you.
I was around at the point the first personal computers were presented. I started as a Navy Electronics technician, communications and radar. I was volunteered for a special assignment where I dealt with crypto, and satellite technology. I have seen the good and the evil of computer technology. When i retired I washed my mouth out from tje bad taste that I saw happening with computers. If we aren’t careful computers and robots are going to make brainless slaves out of humanity.
Ha - reading your past posts you hardly post patiently.
But you’re missing several “key points” to my post Astro. Do you realize that far more people with a noticeable hearing loss do not wear hearing aids due to stigma/image, versus those that do? Guess not.
With hearing assistance provided through glasses you can throw any shame, disgrace or yea “stigma” out the window if you need to wear hearing aids. Believe me I should be been wearing HA"s in my early 20’s but held off way too long. Due to all of the above. In any case let’s check back in a few years and see who wins this discussion. Medical science, tech companies, etc. are making things smaller and smaller. That’s a fact. So in a few years instead of seeing some over-sized or bulky smart glasses for deaf or hearing impaired you’ll see (presto) perfectly normal looking glasses that will provide live captioning. Just like you use on T.V.
You’ll also see HA’s built into glasses, which when you think about it is a perfect marriage for those who have a mild to mid range haring loss and need glasses. Notice I didn’t say mid-range to severe hearing loss.
What shame? We are all human we aren’t perfect. I have been wearing aids for 20 years and I tell everyone that I have a hearing disability. It is only fair that anyone that is conversing with me understands that I can’t always understand what they are saying. You are even making it worse. Smart glasses may be a help for people with younger eyes. But for most with hearing loss they also have poor eyesight. Even with glasses I have to hold what ever I am reading at arms length. There is no way I can read anything that would be that close to my eyes
Dude - regarding HA in glasses I’m talking those with a mild to mid range hearing loss. Stop saying I’m talking about those with a severe to profound loss. Boy you do need glasses.
Regarding smart glasses with live speech to text display, where is that different than translation glasses that turn Chinese into English and French into German. So its OK for someone too travel and use smart glasses for language translation, but not use when you’re hearing impaired.
Get real. Lastly not everyone fits your current “health status” so bend a little and think about someone who is 30 years old, or 40 years, or where ever and wants to try something new. All your posts are a like. Gets tiring
