I’ve had severe hearing loss my whole life, which meant that I needed to wear hearing aids. Now, I know what you’re thinking, old dude sitting around a nursing home asking each other “What!?” all the time. Yeah, I guess that’s me in a nutshell. But, Man, do I get to wear some sweet pieces of technology all day, every day. Currently, I have one Oticon Epoq hearing aid in my right year. Next week, thanks to a very generous and heart lifting fundraiser, I will be fit with one in my left ear. Oticon is based out of Denmark, they’ve been around for so long, the first hearing aid they sold were those ones you see in the early 1900’s where it looked like people were putting a horn up to their ears to hear better. Yeah that was THESE guys. Now, my pieces can be so fine tuned for auditory bliss, you’ll wish you were hard of hearing.
This is my first set of digital hearing aids, my whole life I’ve had analog. The difference between them is like night and day. When I got my new hearing aids, it’s like I was experiencing the world for the first time where it wasn’t just extremely loud and coming at me like a high speed freight train. I had no idea the ceiling fan in my living room made a slight clicking noise when it was whirling. Walking through crunchy leaves or pine needles was so clear, I could actually hear the leaves crackling under my feet for the first time in full audio quality. I went to a movie, and understood most of the dialog for the first time because I was able to play around with the volume settings and “movie theater” program to hear a movie like I never have before.
Bluetooth? Check. These have it, I can hook it up to my cell phone and with a push of a button on a remote that you can carry with you, answer the phone that is beeping in my ears. Why is it cool? It goes into both of my ears not just one, and the sound quality makes it sound as if they are standing right next to you. Also, because the hearing aids are in telephone setting, it blocks out anything else that would be considered noise for a crystal clear sound. Having it hooked up to my MP3 player, its like having the best ear buds in the world, which they are, blocking out everything except the MP3 stream.
Jealous yet? There’s more!
There is full surround sound with these things too. I can have a program setup where I can only hear what is going on directly in front of me, be at a crowded bar and the audio sensors block out everything that registers over a certain decibel level so I can carry a conversation with whoever I’m facing. Or if I wanted to hear that ninja coming up from behind, have it programmed to only hear directly behind me, and block out all noise in every other direction.
I got to test out a little device that you plugged into your TV or wherever you kept the audio for it, and have a program where the TV or Music then is piped right into my hearing aids over wireless. No more trying to listen over the neighbors dog barking, or the fans in the room working over time to keep you cool, or the wife commentating on what is going on. Just you, and the show.
There is a downside though, I think the wireless function looses a little bit in the quality department because it has to compress so damn much. In the case of the TV device, you hear about the same as if there were no wireless, it just blocks out ‘interfering’ sound. Which is a blessing and a curse, since some shows my wife and I like to pause and discuss things before pushing play, I would have to change the to the normal hearing program, wait the slight second for it to turn on, have the talk, click it back to TV setting, and wait for it to turn on. On the shows where we REALLY like to talk, it’s a big pain.
The only other downside? When I take my hearing aids out to go to bed at night, my hearing is dead to the world, a freight train could roll over and I can’t hear it. It’s a two sided coin if you look at it from that angle, I can’t hear noise outside, but if you want to break all my windows and come in, I won’t hear it. Nobody said that the first step of becoming a full cyborg was easy.