Thank you for showing me exactly where that article said that the audiogram accommodation is for both transparency and streaming. I do admit that I missed that part, so you did show me up as I asked for it.
Also thank you for that YouTube video link where they did the REM of both the APP2 and the P90. That is very informative.
So here’s my position on this. First off, I take that statement from the article with a grain of salt because the author of that article is not an official Apple Tier 2 Technical Support person. He can only “assume” that the audiogram accommodation is applied to the Transparency mode, but his word is not golden. At least not compared to the Apple Tier 2 Tech Support person who told me the opposite (no audiogram accommodation for Transparency, only for streaming). So I’m still dismissing the quote from the article as having no value to me. I’m not being stubborn here. I just choose to believe the Apple Tier 2 Tech Support person more because 1) they work for Apple, so they should know what they’re talking about, and 2) what they told me is consistent with what I’m not hearing in the Transparency mode → I don’t hear the audiogram accommodation in Transparency, not in the same obvious way that I hear it when streaming.
Now let’s move on to the YouTube video. This is worth discussing more than the article, because it’s data driven and the data is shown live for everyone to see. Without making it too long,
1. At 7:40 into the video, the audi said that “The real takeaway here is that the APP2 does amplify”.
My comment: I don’t disagree with this. I never said that the APP2 doesn’t amplify. I can hear the amplification in the APP2 during Transparency mode just fine. What I said is that the APP2s don’t amplify anywhere enough in the mids and highs to compensate/accommodate enough based on my audiogram input like with streaming.
So the question here is “why in streaming mode from the iPhone, the APP2 seems to amplify enough for me, but in Transparency mode, it doesn’t amplify enough to sound as good as in the streaming mode?” Certainly it can if it wants to (because it does it in streaming), but it won’t amplify as well in Transparency. My only conclusion is that because it doesn’t do audiogram accommodation in Transparency.
The REM result kind of supports this. The P90 amplification is up to par with what the patient needs, but the APP2 amplification is barely above what the patient needs. Although the amplification trend seems to track the hearing loss outline of the patient somewhat, there are just too many factors to know for sure whether this is actually based on the audiogram of the patient, or more or less a coincidence because perhaps this is the de-facto amplification for the Transparency mode, or perhaps this is how the APP2 chooses to respond to the kind of REM stimulus that was applied. We’ll never know. The audi in the video at 7:45 said that “there’s a lot of variables that we don’t have control over”.
The experiment in this video did not do a REM test in the streaming mode. It looks like they only did the REM in the Transparency mode generated by speakers over the air. I wish they had done it in the streaming mode to see what the audiogram accommodation in streaming looks like compared to that in the Transparency mode. If it’s like anything I experience, there would be more amplification in streaming, because that’s where the audiogram accommodation actually takes place.
2. At 7:50 into the video, you can hear the Hearing Tracker guy said "Um, if that was the change in the future, maybe like if we were able to be able to create a custom audiogram for the AirPods, maybe it’ll get better."
My comment: while there is acknowledgement that the APP2 does amplify in Transparency, there is a consensus that the amplification is not up to par with what the audiogram requires (as seen on the graph, not to the level that the Phonak P90 amplifies). So that’s why there’s a mention of “creating a custom audiogram for the AirPods” in the future to make it better. That right there is acknowledgement that the audiogram accommodation is not anywhere near sufficient (or I even contend that it doesn’t even make use of the audiogram in the Transparency mode), except for people with only mild hearing loss, to be able to use the APP2 as a hearing device effectively.
3. At 8:56 into the video, the audio concludes that the APP2 is only suitable for "mild, maybe mild loss, maybe moderate, but probably not enough amplification… More so I say with a mild loss"
My comment: This pretty much sums it up right here. The conclusion from the audi is that while there is amplification by the APP2 in the Transparency mode, it’s only enough for folks with a mild loss. So my conclusion is that the APP2 CANNOT really be used by most folks on this forum because most of us have moderate if not severe and even profound loss. Many, if not most, folks with mild hearing loss usually don’t even bother with getting fitting with hearing aids. So the APP2 may be suitable for those folks, but definitely not for the mainstream folks on this forum who need to wear hearing aids because the APP2 is not a suitable replacement as a hearing device for them.
Last but not least, with the kind of hearing loss the OP (original poster) of this thread has, the APP2 is definitely not a suitable hearing device replacement for him, which is what I said in the first place before we got engaged in this debate. So the debate whether the APP2 Transparency does amplify or not is irrelevant because even if it does amplify like the YouTube video shows, it does not amplify anywhere “enough” for folks with worse than a mild loss.
