[ramLlama]

A bigger issue with separating the microphone and amplifier is cosmetic: hearing aids sadly have a stigma attached to them and people are more likely to wear them if they are invisible. There is a reason why hearing aids are produced in hair colors.

Also, I found that the best way to get rid of feedback was to get an ear mold rather than using an "open-fit" mold. This is a clear separation between the speaker and the microphone and pretty much solves the problem in my experience.

EDIT: I noticed late that you addressed the cosmetic issue in your post. I don't see the elderly changing but our generation just might.

[randlet]

"I don't see the elderly changing but our generation just might."

I'm youngish (mid 30's) and recently had my hearing aids replaced and realized I had a strong preference to stick with fairly visible behind-the-ear units rather than something more "discrete". I want them to be visible so that people I'm interacting with will be more sympathetic about repeating themselves and may make an (possibly unconscious) effort to speak more clearly.

The line of thinking that got me over being self conscious was "Lot's of people walk around with assistive devices for their vision...why should I be embarrassed about the same thing for my hearing?"

[analog31]

If I notice that somebody has hearing aids, I make sure that they can see my lips when I'm talking.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

My first experience with a close friend who had partial hearing loss lead me to realise how much lip reading helped her. If she wasn't looking at your face her responses would often be nonsensical.

Also, I work in a noisy environment where hearing protection is mandatory, and I find I have less trouble understanding people if I can see their face.

[72deluxe]

That's very good reasoning. If a person with visual impairment walks around with a white stick, it's obvious and people normally cater for their needs. It shouldn't be any different with hearing.

What a good point.

I have an elderly friend who has suffered complete hearing loss in one ear after an infection and the other ear can only detect very very low frequencies, and he's constantly saying "PARDON?". It must be very difficult to hear ANYTHING going on, other than the rumble of lorries and buses. I wonder if they could put a pitch-shifting circuit in his hearing aid to shift sounds up/down so that they fall within his hearing range, whilst not shifting frequencies already in that range. That would help significantly, surely?

Just thinking out loud.

[jnbiche]

> I wonder if they could put a pitch-shifting circuit in his hearing aid to shift sounds up/down so that they fall within his hearing range, whilst not shifting frequencies already in that range. That would help significantly, surely?

If you read the article, you'll see that's more or less what most modern hearing aids do, via a technique called multi-band compression.

Edit: Actually, here anigbrowl, an audio engineer, states that this is not how multi-band compression works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8854142

Assuming he is correct, my above statement may well be wrong.

[72deluxe]

Multiband compression works by splitting the incoming audio into different bands, much like your bass/mid/treble controls on your EQ only works on bass/mid/treble parts of the frequency range. Compression is then applied to only those frequencies and then they are summed together.

There is no pitch shifting in multiband compression - pitch shifting involves moving the frequency up or down by a number of cents, semitones, octaves etc. It's the effect used to get the "chipmonk" voice (high-pitch and squeaky) where a normal voice is fed into a pitch shifter and it is shifted up or down. It is also how harmonisers work, where they work out the frequency you're singing at and shift it up 7 notes (or an arbitrary amount) so you can sing and get a harmony of yourself.

[jimktrains2]

> fairly visible behind-the-ear units

I've had hearing aids like that for almost a year, and "fairly visible" is a stretch; they're pretty blasé and don't stand out.

[randlet]

You're right, they're still fairly subtle and probably not the first thing someone would notice about me, but if I turn my head slightly, you're bound to notice my ear moulds/tube.

[jimktrains2]

True, I do wear glasses as well, so they kind of blend into that as well.

[ramLlama]

I too wear BTE's with glasses and most people are surprised when I tell them I wear hearing aids. They cannot see them.

This is especially true of modern "Receiver In The Ear" (RITE) models where instead of a tube carrying sound, you have a very thin wire going into your ear canal.

[thaumasiotes]

> hearing aids sadly have a stigma attached to them

It's probably worth distinguishing between two kinds of phenomena that might be described as carrying a stigma:

- Something might lead other people to mock or otherwise denigrate you for exhibiting it. Being fat is a good example here; fat people get a lot of messaging from society that they're worse people for being fat.

- Something might carry no real significance to the rest of society while still being viewed, by the individual, as painfully embarrassing. There's a traditional view that women don't like to wear glasses because they think the glasses ruin their looks. I don't know how well that currently corresponds to reality; I've known one girl who really hated her glasses for that reason and another who, not needing glasses of her own, liked to take other people's and wear them -- but that's the prototype of a "category two" stigma: a woman who hates wearing her glasses even though no one around her sees anything wrong with them.

I suspect that hearing aids are firmly within the second category, which means getting people to wear them "openly" should be doable.

[adrianhoward]

"I suspect that hearing aids are firmly within the second category, which means getting people to wear them "openly" should be doable."

You suspect wrongly. Having seen the attitudes to my father change when he wore one. Ranging from outright verbal abuse, to assumptions of stupidity & senility.

[hibbelig]

Maybe it's related to age? I've been wearing "behind the ears" aids since I was 7 and I never sensed any perception like that.

(I have no idea what is the correct term for "behind the ears", I hope it's understandable.)

[R_Edward]

17 years ago, I worked for a hearing aid manufacturer. The common terms in use there were BTE and ITE, for "behind the ear" and "in the ear." Frankly, I thought the initialisms were poorly conceived. ITE is three syllables, same as "in the ear," and less meaningful for the uninitiated. BTE only saves you one syllable, again at the cost of meaningfulness. But either which way, your terminology is both understandable and correct.

Off-topic: While I was there, they asked employees to submit ideas for a new hearing aid marketing slogan, with the incentive of a free vacation to Vegas going to the person who submitted the one they used. For some reason, I did not win the vacation with my suggestion: "Stick It In Your Ear!"

[thaumasiotes]

It would be pretty interesting to see people assume that a ten-year-old suffered from senility because he was wearing a hearing aid. By definition, it only applies to the old.

[72deluxe]

Really? Who from? That's terrible.

[adrianhoward]

Just people.

At the low end when eating out in restaurants occasionally having wait staff ignore him and asking other folk at the table "what would he like", or people assuming that he couldn't hear and talking about him — to at the high end having a guy shouting "deaf fuck" at him repeatedly on the street for no obvious reason.

I'm not trying to say that this happened every day — especially the outright insults. But it was enough to be noticeable.

I suspect, as @hibbelig commented, age had something to do with it.