I think there really isn’t a specific “snr I need.” No matter what your QuickSIN score is, we all enter SNR environments in real life where whatever inherent SNR discernment you have isn’t good enough. Even normal-hearing people have trouble coping in many environments. It’s a pain to carry a remote mic with you and get other folks to engage in using it. So, I think it’s great that HA OEMs are competing to offer SNR improvements in their products, however incremental. It increases the distance from those marginal areas where you just can’t cope with your HAs alone. And for me, and probably many other wearers, it’s that too familiar “my HAs-can’t-cope” experience that’s the most annoying thing about these expensive devices. If every half dozen years, some HA OEM does come up with a device that improves SNR enhancement just a few dB above the competition, I’ll buy it for that albeit marginal benefit. Not sure it’s historically correct, but I think the Phonak timeline released with all the Sphere hoorah said that in 2014, digital HAs only offered a ~3 dB SNR improvement, so we’ve come a long way, baby!
On the “some situations just need a mic,” I’m wondering if things get so high-tech that we’re all wandering around wearing earbuds or hearing aids, whether each wearable device could be its own little Auracast broadcasting station. Your earbuds or HAs have mics that pick up your conversation and relay it back to your phone. If you choose, you could go live on the air. Perhaps you’d have the option as to who could pick up your Auracast channel based on your contact list or on ad hoc admission to your listening circle (like a Zoom meeting, where you have to request and be approved for an invitation to join, e.g. NFC, by touching phones???). But that way, everyone wearing earbuds or HAs might serve as remote microphones. This is pie-in-the-future-sky. Wearables become remote Auracast microphones giving every conversation a 22 dB SNR advantage ( ).