Sony Releases Its First Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids 68
Sony has announced the availability of its first OTC hearing aids, the $1,000 CRE-C10 and $1,300 CRE-E10, built in partnership with WS Audiology. Engadget reports: The devices are built for daily use for those with mild to moderate hearing loss. They're controlled via Sony's "Hearing Control" app that guides users through setup and allows them to personalize settings like volume control. It also allows a "self-fit" that adjusts to appropriate pre-defined hearing profiles "based on thousands of actual, real-life audiogram results," Sony said. The CRE-C10 model (above) offers a battery life of up to 70 hours of continuous use. Sony says they're one of the smallest OTC hearing aids on the market, offering a discreet design that's "virtually invisible when worn" and "exceptional sound quality." It goes on sale this month for $1,000 at Amazon, Best Buy, and select hearing-care professionals.
Meanwhile, the CRE-E10 has a more earbud-like design, powered by a rechargeable battery with up to 26 hours of life between charges. It's Bluetooth compatible as well, so users can connect to devices and listen to streaming audio or music, though only on iOS, Sony says. Those will go on sale for $1,300 sometime this winter at Sony's website. In August, the FDA decided to allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter and without a prescription to adults.
Meanwhile, the CRE-E10 has a more earbud-like design, powered by a rechargeable battery with up to 26 hours of life between charges. It's Bluetooth compatible as well, so users can connect to devices and listen to streaming audio or music, though only on iOS, Sony says. Those will go on sale for $1,300 sometime this winter at Sony's website. In August, the FDA decided to allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter and without a prescription to adults.
$1000 or $1300 w/ bluetooth? (Score:3)
Surely a good set of wireless earbuds and a simple smartphone app could do this for less? According to google, I can get a good pair for $80, even if the app is $20, that's only 10% of the cost? If you require pencil-eraser sized in-ear units, perhaps $1000 is worth it.
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You can buy hearing aids for a couple of dollar at Ali Express. However, something like these sony ones will provide a much better experience.
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Sony is relying on their name recognition and being the first out the door. Of course they are going to set the price at the absolute top end, if for no other reason so they can say "50% off during the holiday shopping season" and set the price down to $600.
I'm guessing in about a year you will be able to buy a generic set of quality hearing aids on Amazon or from Costco that will have a quick setup feature like a 14-band audiology exam, then initially set the amplification levels for those bands appropria
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If the batteries aren't replaceable, I guess it's more like $500/year
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There is a difference between a Personal Sound Amplifying Device (PSAP) and a hearing aid. The latter is an FDA approved medical device, the former is...what you're describing for $80. There is a big difference [forbes.com].
Depending on your level and type of hearing loss, the $80 option may work for you.
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From that article:
“PSAP manufacturers may be providing these claimed features, but based on the price and a PSAP not being classified as a hearing aid by the FDA, PSAPs will not provide the same benefit as a true hearing aid,” says DeMari.
That smells like bullshit. The reasons a hearing aid will give better results are: price, and legal classification. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.
If hearing aids are made better than PSAPs and with more features, that's why they will work better. If a PSAP is well made and has the feature of being calibrated based on a audiologist's tests, wouldn't it work better than a low quality hearing aid?
The difference is just software (Score:2)
The article you mentioned sounds like it was written 10 or more years ago with statements like "Hearing aids can be programmed to mute or amplify certain soundsâ"amplifying a speakerâ(TM)s voice over excessive background noise in a public place, for example. But a PSAP amplifies every sound. So even though a PSAP may amplify the speakerâ(TM)s voice, it will also amplify the whirring of a fan above your head or the sound of a door opening and closing, possibly creating more barriers to hearing
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It is a lot easier to put a DSP and amplifier in an audio channel than a video channel.
The visual equivalent would be something like a camera and VR headset that gave you a tailored view of the outside world based on the defects in your vision.
So buggy analogy.
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Funnily enough, I have tested this out quite thoroughly. Astigmatism and myopia. Well, it turns out that in use the standard reading glasses are actually better than the prescription supplied by an optician after a careful examination. A lot less strain.
I expect they are perfectly good for a lot of people who just have less accommodation in their eyes' near field focussing due to age. And this is probably two thirds or more of those that need reading glasses.
Hearing may be similar.
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You gotta realize, $1k would still be way below rock-bottom dollar for what 'real' hearing aids have traditionally cost. Go get some real hearing aids fitted at Costco and you're at $2.5K. Go to an audiologist with their own office and the first thing they push at you will be over $5k.
I wear hearing aids and I do think they scramble to add expensive features with little added value. I don't think anything in any hearing ai
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I'm just going to hold out for the bone-conducting cochlear signalling subdermal implant accessory for Elon's neurolink.
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Re:$1000 or $1300 w/ bluetooth? (Score:4, Interesting)
Other than the neurolink bit, we're actually not that far off.
My uncle who has worn hearing aids his entire life got cochlear implants [nih.gov] about a year ago and he said that it was such a difference that he had to re-learn to recognize every sound again, because the frequency range was so much better and more clear than any previous solution he'd had.
So yes, I have an uncle who has cyborg hearing.
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Surely a good set of wireless earbuds and a simple smartphone app could do this for less?
This is a first-to-market price, designed to pull in people conditioned to think of hearing aids as being innately expensive because they contain sacred medical magic, rather than just because prices have been propped up by a monopoly. Now that this class of device has gone OTC, there will be a rush to compete and prices will crash to the same open-market levels that we enjoy with other electronic devices.
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The two most significant specs that make the Sony hearing aids different than regular earbuds are weight and battery life. Airpod Pros weigh 5.3 g compared to 3 g for the CRE-E10 and 1 g for the CRE-C10. Also, Airpod Pros batteries last up to 6 hours compared to 26 for the CRE-E10 and 70 for the CRE-C10.
Given those specs and the current market situation with no competitors, the prices are reasonable and expected. The prices will decrease with more competitors, as earbud manufacturers and low-end budget m
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Battery life can be an issue. People who are dependent on hearing aids expect the battery to last all day. "All day" can mean different things for different people, but there aren't any wireless earbuds I'm aware of that'll last 12-18 hours of continuous use.
I suppose you could just buy multiple pairs of earbuds and juggle them around on a charger, if you were so inclined.
Past time (Score:1, Interesting)
Hearing aids, in the end, are nothing but earbuds with an equalizer. The prices have been outrageous, only because of the entry barrier.
Allowing OTC sales will let all the earbuds manufacturers in on the game. Prices should now fall dramatically.
Re:Past time (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's fundamentally wrong. Only the cheapest hearing aids are that simple. If you want that you can buy some $70 hunters' earbuds. Real hearing aids can do shifting of specific frequencies that you're missing to other frequencies.
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It's been a while since I played in this area, but iirc that's not a substantial difference. A fourier transform identifies the content of various frequencies. Whether you then amplify them or shift them isn't a big difference. There are some fancier features - for example. coordinating the reception on both sides to determine which sounds are coming from the person you are facing, and emphasize those. Still, it's all "only" software, with costs that you can amortize over many thousands of sales.
Currently,
Re:Past time (Score:4, Informative)
No one is spending $10k for something an off the shelf unit can do. They are spending $10k for a highly personalised solution to their highly personalised hearing loss.
Not all hearing loss is the same. In fact it would be fair to say no two examples of hearing loss are the same. There's a difference between providing a generic solution that improves quality of life for people fitting into a broad category, and providing a personalised solution that solves quality of life issues for your specific condition.
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Maybe so. But until now, no one could make the *choice* between highly-customized $10K hearing aids, and much cheaper "generic solutions." Many people don't need or can't afford the bells and whistles of the "highly-customized" version.
Let's back up and think about the real purpose of hearing aids: enabling people to hear speech and other common sounds. It is NOT to bring a person's hearing back as close to "normal" as is technologically possible. In software, that's what we call a "nice to have" feature. A
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But until now
False. Sony is not the first to come with a cheap hearing aid, and by god they are far from the cheapest one. If you consider good hearing a nice to have then don't go for Sony, there are devices on the market to enhance audio for the hearing impaired in a wide range of ways for a wide range of conditions for literally 1/30th of the cost.
There's even full blown "hearing aids" for around $600, as in the medical device rather than the personal audio amplifier which the non-medically certified $30 devices whic
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These devices haven't been *legal* until now. Yes, I know, you can order them on Amazon from other countries, and even some made in the US. But they have technically been illegal until now.
Re:Past time (Score:4, Insightful)
For the personallized solution I could see spending some money for the time spent with the audiologist to identify what the specific problems are and configure the earbuds based on the patient's needs, but $10K is a little expensive for something that will probably amount to a few hours worth of service.
You could probably automate a lot of it with software by playing sounds and asking the user if they can hear the sound and adjusting things as needed. There is no reason for the devices to cost so much other than the fact that they are locked behind medical device approvals, which are expensive, and the fact that you can't buy them off the shelf.
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There's really no reason why the testing and tuning job can't be done all in software. One big risk is false positives, but that can be avoided through retesting. The other one is that if someone has a treatable condition they don't know about, they would benefit from an inspection. It's conceivable that the testing software could actually detect possible conditions, however...
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"You could probably automate a lot of it with software by playing sounds and asking the user if they can hear the sound..."
Yes, you can, and I have done it for a relative. All you need is a web browser and a good quality pair of over-ear closed back headphones. We used this site:
https://hearingtest.online/ [hearingtest.online]
It was simple, quick and very illuminating, you could see immediately where the hearing loss was. The very useful thing about this was it clearly showed that it had to be taken seriously.
They were then
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I agree. My GF has minor hearing loss and she is thankful for the level of continuing support she gets from the audiologists. You're not paying for just the device, but the cost also includes hearing analysis, checkups, periodic tune ups and other value added procedures like warranty replacement.
"real" hearing aides are more than just amplifiers now, they do complex noise cancellation, directional control, noisy/crowded room modes, and frequency shifting.
Hers are 5 or 6 years old now and don't have many o
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Maybe there are "fundamental" differences, as you say. But are those differences truly important to a typical person who needs hearing aids? If a cheaper OTC hearing aid makes a person able to understand conversation, that's good enough for most people. If it isn't, then they still have the option to spend $10K on an audiologist and get those bells and whistles. Until now, people didn't really have a choice to make, you could only get the super-premium, expensive version.
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Maybe there are "fundamental" differences, as you say. But are those differences truly important to a typical person who needs hearing aids?
If they don't, then they're already using a cheaper device. When you've lost enough sensitivity to a frequency which commonly occurs in speech, it's kind of a big deal. Relatively simple amplification helps a lot of people, but it also doesn't help a lot of people much.
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If they don't, then they're already using a cheaper device.
You clearly don't have any elderly people in your life. My father-in-law uses hearing aids. It absolutely would never occur to him that he could get a cheaper device without going to an audiologist. Elderly people today were brought up with the notion that you go to the doctor when you need something medical. The concept of doing your own research and finding your own solution, is completely foreign to them.
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The elderly people in my life died, but some of them went to an audiologist and some of them bought something cheaper instead. You can literally see them on checkstands these days.
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And echo cancelling. The speaker and the mic are right next to each other. And multi-channel compression. And noise reduction. And beam forming of multiple microphones. All on a DSP that is small enough to fit inside your ear and run off battery. And configurable and tunable to meet individual differences.
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I'm pretty sure that AirPods and other premium level headphones have most of those options.
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No, that's fundamentally wrong. Only the cheapest hearing aids are that simple. If you want that you can buy some $70 hunters' earbuds. Real hearing aids can do shifting of specific frequencies that you're missing to other frequencies.
Bullshit.
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Bullshit.
OK Troller [webmd.com]
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Bullshit.
OK Troller [webmd.com]
Not Trolling; just uninformed, sorry!
Can't imagine how that could be done without messing with a patient's decades of experience hearing non-pitch-shifted sound-spectrums, requiring learning to recognize consonant-sounds all over again to some extent. Plus, frequency-shifting generally carries with it its own set of distortions from "waveform-splicing" effects.
How much pitch-shifting are we talking about? My personal experience with "Harmonizers" is that, as you shift downward more than a few musical semito
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Hearing aids are designed mostly around making it easier to understand speech (as opposed to things like earbuds which are designed around things like making music sound good). Features like frequency shifting are kind of a love/hate things for the people who need it. They like being able to understand what people are saying, but at the same time hate how the sound is unnatural to them.
One of the problems for new hearing aid users actually isn't so much that things suddenly sound different, but as a lot o
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Hearing aids are designed mostly around making it easier to understand speech (as opposed to things like earbuds which are designed around things like making music sound good). Features like frequency shifting are kind of a love/hate things for the people who need it. They like being able to understand what people are saying, but at the same time hate how the sound is unnatural to them.
One of the problems for new hearing aid users actually isn't so much that things suddenly sound different, but as a lot of them had been living with poor hearing already for some time, is suddenly being able to hear things that they aren't used to hearing.
And anything people intrinsically hate will eventually stay on top of their dresser instead of their ears.
And the "suddenly hearing new things" has been a problem with hearing aids since the first ones were introduced decades ago.
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Hearing aids, in the end, are nothing but earbuds with an equalizer. The prices have been outrageous, only because of the entry barrier.
Allowing OTC sales will let all the earbuds manufacturers in on the game. Prices should now fall dramatically.
Depends entirely on the type of hearing loss, and for that matter, the type of hearing aid.
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Sure, but now people can choose. There certainly is a segment of the population that will do just fine with OTC hearing aids. Why not let them risk their $1,000 to find out? These things aren't going to preclude them from going to an audiologist to get $10,000 premium hearing aids. Choice is a good thing.
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Something something free market lowers prices
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And for many people, fix-specification supermarket glasses will work just fine. If they don't, people can still go see the optometrist.
For those who can't afford an optometrist or an audiologist, OTC versions are a godsend.
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It's more like saying that basic lenses and frames from an online retailer that costs $30 can solve the same problem that glasses from your optometrists office will charge $200, or more if you want "designer frames".
Sure, the solution won't work for everyone, Some people need very specialized glasses because they have rare conditions. But the vast majority of people can get by just fine with a more basic solution.
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Costco (Score:1)
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Hopefully a game changer? (Score:2)
The cost of hearing aids is ridiculous especially in light of the developments wrt earbuds, etc. The article also suggests that these are FDA approved so it will be interesting to see what kind of pivot existing hearing aid manufacturers are going to do. Will they keep prices jacked up while claiming a better experience than Sony hearing aids or drop prices to compete?
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It's a shot across the bow, which has been needed for a long time. Sony's offering here is only going to get better as they start getting feedback from users of their software, and they add features over time. And, as others have said, other companies that are already making high quality noise cancelling earbuds are already most of the way to having a viable product anyway, so I would expect to see Apple and Bose get into the mix at some point too - because if they can just tweak an existing design a bit
How much of what is heard... (Score:2)
We just have to get there ... (Score:2)
Ripoff (Score:2)
Seeing as everyone already wears their earbuds 24/7, I don't see the need to be super small, the only selling point for why a hearing aid should be any more expensive than earbuds.
Sony continues the hearing aid rip-off (Score:1)
After years of the racket where over thousand of dollars taken from victims with poor hearing to custom fit about $20 worth of electronics, mostly preying on the elderly, a good thing happened. In recent years under $40 hearing aids with silicone that molds and fits to the ear have been available, and surprise surprise the audio is even better than the traditional scam aids.
But shame on Sony, they saw a market exploiting people and decided to make similarly overpriced bait.
Disgusting.
If you or your loved
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It might come as a huge surprise to you, but not all hearing loss is equal. Good that your pops was able to get away with a cheap fix, but there's a whole lot of people that won't work for.
Kind of like people that can go to CVS and buy some reader glasses for $10 and be good to go, versus people that have to go to a proper optometrist for a specifically tailored prescription.
This shows that prices will come down - while Sony is charging a hefty price tag currently, it's still substantially less than what h
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No. Wrong. You have HUGE misconception, the "cheap fix" had far better frequency response curve across entire audio spectrum than normal expensive hearing aids. The cheap plugs will work better for ALL people. Moreover the silicone mold to the ear upon insertation unlike the hundreds of dollars session for the rip-off traditional hearing aids. There is no benefit whatsoever to being gouged for expensive hearing aids and the sound is worse.
What? (Score:2)
Come again?
From the company who contributed (Score:1)
... to your hearing loss...
Controlled by an app? (Score:2)
Hearing what? (Score:2)
I know about air gapped attacks, but hearing aids?