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by jluk 3480 days ago
Neat prospect, but I'm not convinced this is a big enough problem for the majority of people which is how this is marketed. I would also expect a price point comparative to other hearing aids to further distance the average consumer.
2 comments

Depends on price for me.

I have trouble hearing in noisy environments. When I was young I was diagnosed with an auditory processing problem so I assume it's related to that.

When I meet with someone in a noisy environment I just accept that I'm only going to understand every other word that someone says. Which leads to a lot of smiling and nodding blankly.

I know very expensive hearing aids could handle this for me but it's not a big enough problem for me to check into that route. However if this was $150 bucks or so I might get some. Though I expect the price tag will be more like $600.

Interesting, to me I would never carry an additional independent hearing aid for this problem. I generally have my keys, wallet, smartphone, and possibly music headphones. If this could be paired in with existing headphones - awesome, otherwise I can't see many people adding an additional headphone to the aforementioned list without a larger problem. I do like the expansion of the Bose objective though with this.
Do you have reason to believe these aren't intended to replace your current daily driver headphones?
Think of augmented reality. It's generally conceived as modifying what you see, but why couldn't you benefit from a computer able to modify what you hear? It ought to be possible to do a lot of Google Glass-like things, not to mention Black Mirror-like, without looking as much like a space cadet or demanding as much of the hardware. (As a hearing aid user I was thinking about this 10 years ago.)