I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of the complaints about new hearing aids are from people who remember hearing better, years ago with the old ones, not accounting for the additional hearing loss the new one is trying to compensate for.
But I also wouldn’t be surprised if many of the current digital ones are overpriced crap marked up way above cost.
I worked with sensor systems that did just that over 40 years ago. The signal processing channel was analog at audio frequency (except at the very front end, where it was analog at infrared and even higher frequencies), with a digitally controlled AGC (volume control).
I think it’s insane that you can buy a new iphone and wireless Bluetooth earbuds for a fraction of the cost of decent hearing aids. My mom went though this last year after her dog ate her super expensive ones. She was so frustrated and the loss we looked for alternatives. Found some for like 300 bucks. I figured how bad could they be? That’s like more than audiophile headphones cost. But they were terrible and Shenzhen ended up getting more of the ones that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Someone if obviously profiteering with the cost of these things.
Yeah the good ones are tuned by the specialist to the person’s particular need
Wow, that’s got to be the most interesting and educational first post I’ve ever seen, thanks! 
(Oh, and welcome to BB, try not to be disappointed, lol!) 
I heard from a hearing aid dealer once that the markup is around 9000%, (90x!)
That’s insane but I’d sorta believe it. My point is that the technology seems like it should be relatively simple compared to these other popular consumer devices, and yet soooo much more expensive.
In music, vinyl records – and even cassette tapes – have been staging a resurgence, as listeners vote with their feet for the qualities of analog sound.
Citation needed. Because as far as I can tell music is increasingly going digital (although downloads are mostly moving over to streaming). Yes vinyl and cassette sales are increasing, but cassettes definitely don’t have better audio quality than a half decent mp3, and I’d suggest that most analogue sales are on aesthetic grounds (which is my polite way of saying ‘hipsters’).
My only experience of hearing aids is the ones my dad is supposed to wear, but doesn’t, so we have to shout at him and repeat everything.
This all makes me wish Neil Young had spent money and focus on improving basic hearing aid standards instead of trying to make a consumer mp3 player for people who didn’t want it.
My brother in law just spent $6000 on one (no idea if it is digital or not, but from the article it probably is). So they ain’t cheap no matter the “quality.”
I thought 320kbps was good enough for human ears to struggle to tell from lossless?
As somebody who’s used hearing aids sincethe 90s and does audio work this article is garbage. Most good hearing aids are perfectly adequate for day to day use and analog hearing aids were horrible feedback machines that I could barely tolerate. Also the analog ones didnt have fine eq lime the digital ones do and that makes a massive difference for day to day use.
With a modern wncoder like LAME (instead of the shit frauenhoffer reference encoder) and average quality equipment, 320kbps at 48kHz is going to be transparent quality.
On high end setups you might plausibly be able to tell the difference, but I doubt objective ABX testing would be able to tell modern 320kbps 48kHz from a pcm stream.
I’m in the market for new hearing aids, and found this video that seems to suggest the latest costco’s have more or less the same features as the Phonak Audeo Marvel (ok, without rechargeability and T-coil, but I don’t need those).
What do you think?
Dunno, but Costco hearing aids get good marks for customer satisfaction according to consumer reports, and I would hope that continues with this new make and model of hearing aid.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
