First Look at a Game-Changer: EssilorLuxottica’s New OTC Hearing Aid Glasses
Andrew Bellavia
Business Development l Branding l Advisor l Speaker l Content Creator l Hearing Care & Communication Advocate l Co-Host of This Week in Hearing Podcast
I never saw it coming. Or maybe it’s appropriate to say I never saw where it was coming from. A hint at future possibilities was in view with the 2021 release of Ray-Ban Stories including “streamlined, open-ear speakers” and a “three-microphone audio array” with “beamforming technology and a background noise suppression algorithm.” But this didn’t imply a hearing device. Could an effective solution be created in glasses form factor? I was given the chance to find out at EssilorLuxottica’s Tortona Experience Center in Milan.
Doing for hearing what they did for eyeglasses
If you don’t know EssilorLuxottica, you will. With sales of EUR 24.5 billion (USD 27b) in FY 2022, EssilorLuxottica is the company behind many of the iconic eyeglass brands you recognize including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, and many more. They also own or franchise more than 17,000 optical shops and sunglass stores worldwide.
In the hearing world, comparisons are sometimes made to optical care. These often take on a wistful tone relating how eyeglasses have broken the stigma barrier to become fashionable while hearing devices remain saddled with negative perceptions around aging and disability. I really believed the breakthrough in hearing would come from a well-known audio brand. As a result of my visit, I’ve revised my thinking. Having done it with eyeglasses, EssilorLuxottica is poised to repeat their success in the hearing world.
Hands-on testing
Earlier this month I awoke to an email inviting me to join a select group to experience and give feedback on an exciting new hearing device. Soon I was in EssilorLuxottica’s beautiful new Experience Center wearing an intriguing set of prototype eyeglasses fresh from the lab. Two questions were foremost in my mind - how natural is the sound, and how effective can an open-ear device be at coping with loud environments. My hearing loss is of a different nature and more severe in the 2-4kHz range than typical mild to moderate age-related loss. If the glasses worked well for me, they would likely be effective for the target consumer. I was looking forward to putting them to the test.
In the quiet office setting, the sound was so natural that one could quickly forget they were wearing anything but ordinary glasses. To find out what they were all about, I staged an impromptu multi-talker test. I stood about 1.5-2m in front of a rather soft-spoken female who talked directly to me. At the same time two males, about the same distance away and off my left side, spoke to each other. The result was nothing short of remarkable. Trying to ignore context and not looking at the lips of the person speaking to me, I estimate word recognition to be about 60% unaided and essentially 100% when wearing the glasses. A great beginning, but how would they perform in louder settings?
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Into the lion’s den
The real test came at dinner. We occupied a small, private area of the restaurant in which the sound of everyone socializing amounted to about 75db according to the Starkey SoundCheck Live app. Unaided, this would be my worst nightmare. I arranged a similar test in which two females were positioned about 1.5m in front of me and talking to each other. The rest of the dinner party were positioned in an arc from just to my right to 90° to my left. With the glasses off, I was still able to understand one of the talkers a majority of the time but I knew her well and she spoke with a deeper voice. The other, whom I had not met before and who was also rather soft-spoken, was almost completely unintelligible to me. I recognized no more than 20% of her words.?
The real magic came when I put the glasses on. My understanding of the first person’s speech was 100%, and nearly so for the second. Only occasionally did I miss a word, a vast improvement over unaided listening. I put the glasses on and off several times to make sure of what I was hearing. The result was nothing short of remarkable.
It’s a brand-new game
In a podcast recorded just before all this took place, Dave Kemp (who also attended the demo) and I had a conversation on how hearing aid stigma could be broken by a major audio brand. Though the discussion revolved around Mark Gurman’s Bloomberg article describing that Apple would incorporate their own hearing test into iOS, many of the themes we touched on are apropos to EssilorLuxottica’s announcement, with one key difference. Audio brands like Apple would have to pivot their messaging to create cultural acceptance for wearing earphones in social situations. EssilorLuxottica has no such issue. As glasses are already fashionable in large part due to their own efforts, EssilorLuxottica’s new hearing device is poised to be the game-changer we’ve been waiting for.?
Andrew Bellavia, Aurafuturity LLC
27 July, 2023
Update 18 August
Stefano Genco , GM of EssilorLuxottica's Super Audio division, posted a video showing the intended form factor and speech clarity improvement, the latter being pretty close to my experience with the prototype. View it here.
Sales Director at Iain James Furniture Ltd
6 个月I have tried 'hearing aid spectacles' from main suppliers in the UK: was informed I was not a suitable user because I didn't suffer from 'Conductive hearing loss' i.e. my problem is in my inner ear. The graph portrayed earlier in the article was similar to mine, straight line across & then a sharp dip. I am very interested as to when the Essilor Luxotica product will be available in the UK ?
Creative Brand Strategist | Digital Performance Marketing Expert | Driving Brand Engagement and Growth | Passionate Storyteller
1 年What a game-changer indeed. My mother hates wearing hearing aids. This would be a great solution for her!
Head of Embedded Solutions hos Coloplast
1 年Hanne Dürrler - troede ikke det ville v?re muligt, men ser ud til dit ?nske er p? vej i opfyldelse...
Audiologist at Hoorcentrum Melakos nv
1 年Do you have a technical sheet? If it’s not RIC, how does the sound get to the eardrum? You say open speaker? Doesn’t it bother bystanders
SVP | Head of Product | MedTech | Innovation | Leadership | ex-Sonova | ex-ABB
1 年Andrew Bellavia can you say more about the product as such?