Hearing Aid

Hearing aids can have trouble separating a voice a listener wants to hear from all the background noise. Through a new form of artificial intelligence scientists believe they have come up with a solution that could be of huge benefit to those with hearing impairments.

​When trying to hear what another person is saying, hearing aid users are often stymied by loud background noises, such as the voices of other people in the same room. Scientists at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University are working on a solution, in the form of a "smart" camera-connected hearing aid.

Starkey Hearing Technologies has transformed a single use device into a multi-purpose hearing aid, adding physical activity and cognitive tracking smarts to a device that essentially moves health trackers away from the wrist and wraps them around the ears.

A small Australian company is hoping to blow multi-thousand-dollar prescription hearing aids out of the water. This US$449 pair of over-the-counter, Bluetooth hearing augmentation earbuds can test and adjust to your hearing, connect to your phone, and separate voices from background noise.

​The ultra-fine nature of spider silk has provided inspiration for scientists developing sensitive new types of microphones. Further down the track, these new devices could be put to use in advanced hearing aids and phones that pick up sounds at much lower frequencies.

Speech-to-text systems already exist, as do augmented-reality displays. Now, a group of tech-savvy teens have combined the two technologies to form the Live Time Closed Captioning System. Once up and running, it could revolutionize the way in which deaf people communicate with the hearing world.

Soundhawk is an ear-worn "smart listening system," which the company insists isn't a hearing aid. We took those claims at face value, to see how it stacks up as an audio enhancer for people with "normal" (or close to it) hearing. Read on for Gizmag's review.

In order to regain their sense of hearing, many deaf people currently opt for cochlear implants. Such devices are expensive, however, plus they must be surgically installed. That's why researchers are developing an electric retainer that transmits spoken words to the user by buzzing their tongue.

The Ormia ochracea fly has a unique hearing mechanism that allows it to precisely determine the location of a chirping cricket. Scientists have now duplicated that mechanism, with hopes that it could find use in hearing aids.

iHear, an invisible hearing aid, is designed to significantly lower the cost of personalized hearing devices by enabling the user to test the extent of their condition and calibrate the hearing aid from their own home.

The ReSound LiNX hearing aid connects with a user's iPhone to allow music and phone calls to be heard directly through the device, thus allowing more comfortable smartphone use for the hearing impaired.

Regular cochlear implants incorporate external components that get in the way and are visually unappealing. Now, however, fully internal implants may be coming.