The Silent Epidemic of Hearing Loss and the Consumer Electronics Remedy for It

Revision 2.1

 1    Hearing Loss is a Worldwide Problem

According to the World Health Organization (www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and-hearing-loss):

• Around 466 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss.
• It is estimated that by 2050 over 900 million people will have disabling hearing loss.

Hearing loss is associated with social isolation, dementia, falls, depression, and other undesirable conditions.

Hearing aids have typically been considered the most natural remedy for people with hearing loss. Furthermore, statistics indicate that hearing aids are the most needed wearable electronic device world over. Unfortunately, even in developed countries the penetration rate for hearing aids is extremely low. Here are some statistics reported by the US National Institute of Health www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing:

• About 2 percent of adults aged 45 to 54 have disabling hearing loss. The rate increases to 8.5 percent for adults aged 55 to 64. Nearly 25 percent of those aged 65 to 74 and 50 percent of those who are 75 and older have disabling hearing loss.
• About 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids.
• Among adults aged 70 and older with hearing loss who could benefit from hearing aids, fewer than one in three (30 percent) has ever used them. Even fewer adults aged 20 to 69 (approximately 16 percent) who could benefit from wearing hearing aids have ever used them.

Hearing aids are expensive and, in United States, are not covered by medical insurance. In Germany, where hearing aids are fully subsidized, the situation is only slightly better https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00405-019-05312-z . Even people in their 60s with disabling hearing loss are not enthusiastic about acquiring hearing aids.

The situation is catastrophic in low income countries where less than 3% of people with hearing loss use hearing aids. As a result, according to the WHO (same link as above), the global cost of unaddressed hearing loss is US$ 750 billion, annually. Most of this cost could have been prevented.

Is this situation normal? Of course, not. There are multiple reasons for the low penetration rate of hearing aids. Most of them are very well outlined in the report issued in 2015 by The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) that can be downloaded here www.broadinstitute.org/files/sections/about/PCAST/2015%20pcast-hearing-tech.pdf

1. The market for hearing aids is characterized by high cost and low innovation.
2. Current distribution channels create barriers to access.

There is another well-known reason for poor adoption: the social stigma associated with hearing aids. Many people refuse to wear hearing aids irrespective of their price and other factors. These people consider wearing hearing aids as a visual confirmation of their age or disability.

I would like to add the fourth major reason that is a part of the equation. Hearing aids require a professional fitting. The fitting process can sometimes require 4-5 visits to the hearing professional. Even in populated areas of developed countries, this demands a lot of time from both hearing aid dispensers and their clients. In remote and rural areas visiting an audiologist may turn out to be a day-long experience. Even in developed countries, there are simply not enough professionals to fit hearing enhancement devices for all who need them. In developing countries, the number of audiologists may be totally inadequate.

As a result of all the reasons cited above, this unfortunate situation cannot be rectified quickly unless something new is invented. That is what we at Alango Technologies are trying to do.

2    Alango Technologies and its Wear & Hear Brand

2.1   About Alango

Alango Technologies (www.alango.com) was founded in 2002. Today it is one of the major suppliers of digital sound enhancement technologies to worldwide consumer electronics products. These technologies improve voice communication in noisy environments using mobile phones and their accessories, and they are installed in a number of professional communication systems.

For in-car hands-free Bluetooth systems, our software technologies reduce noise and remove echo. Now we want to use them to help hundreds of millions of hard of hearing people worldwide communicate. We could have created another hearing aid, but as Albert Einstein once said, “no problem can be solved with the same kind of thinking that created it”.

To achieve success, we must do something different.

2.2   About Wear & Hear?

Alango Technologies is working hard to create a new, disruptive brand of products to change the lives of people with hearing disabilities. We call it Wear & Hear, and we are trying to make our solutions different from typical hearing aids. Actually, we do not want our devices to be called hearing aids. We call them Personalized Hearing Amplifiers. Basically, these devices include all the functionality found in hearing aids which are related to hearing enhancement. However, they look and work like Bluetooth headsets of different form factors. They resolve all the major limitations of hearing aids which are preventing their wide acceptance:

1. Instead of being expensive medical devices, Wear & Hear products are affordable consumer electronics devices.
2. Instead of being as small as possible to conceal them, Wear & Hear products are stylish and fashionable.
3. Instead of requiring professional fitting, Wear & Hear devices can be self-tuned using a simple hearing assessment conducted with the help of a user-friendly smartphone application.
4. Instead of being distributed via hearing professionals only, we want Wear & Hear devices to be sold over the counter in pharmacies, in optical stores, by retailers, by telecom providers, as well as online.

To date, we have developed the first generation of Wear & Hear products:

BeHear? NOW was designed for hard of hearing people between the ages of 40-70 who are still active socially and professionally. In addition to personalized hearing amplification, BeHear NOW looks and works like a high-quality Bluetooth stereo headset, with some advanced features that you cannot find even in the most popular brand name headsets. BeHear NOW is available for purchase on-line from the Wear & Hear on-line store, Amazon, and some retail shops.

BeHear ACCESS was designed for people between the ages of 55-90. It includes all the functionality of BeHear NOW, but has larger control buttons for people with dexterity issues. It also comes with a magnetic charging station. In addition, the headset includes telecoil receivers making it particularly helpful in public venues equipped with an induction loop. BeHear ACCESS is in production now and will be in stores before the end of this year.

BeHear BUSINESS was designed for people who may feel uncomfortable wearing a device that looks like a stereo headset. It may be relevant for waiters, salespeople, taxi drivers, as well as others who need to communicate with clients who are unaware of the wearer’s hearing loss. BeHear BUSINESS looks like a typical monaural Bluetooth headset, thus avoiding any suspicions that the wearer is listening to music during face-to-face conversations. It provides monaural personalized hearing amplification as well as full Bluetooth headset functionality, with advanced features. BeHear BUSINESS is currently in the pilot production stage. It will be officially introduced at CES 2020.

3    Hearing Loss and Hearing Enhancement

3.1   Scientific facts about the human auditory system

The human auditory system is a very sophisticated mechanism capable of detecting sounds in a very wide range of frequencies and intensities. A healthy young ear can process sounds that differ by up to 1000 times in frequency (20…20,000Hz) and more than 3,000,000 times in the sound pressure level on the eardrum (-5…125dB).

For those who are not familiar with decibels, just think that each step of 20dB corresponds to ten times more sound pressure than the previous step. As such 40dB corresponds to sound that is 100 times stronger than the threshold of hearing, 120dB corresponds to 1,000,000 times stronger and 130dB corresponds to 3,000,000.

In this aspect, human hearing is more sophisticated than vision. For comparison, our eyes can only detect lights that are not more than 2 times different in wavelength (from violet to red) and our static dynamic range in brightness is about 1,000,000.

Considering these differences and the wider operational ranges of our hearing sense, it is no surprise that hearing loss is, in most cases, more difficult to restore than vision. Simple optical glasses or surgery can restore vision to almost normal, while even moderate hearing loss is impossible to restore to its original healthy state. It doesn’t mean, of course, that nothing can be done. 95% of people with hearing loss can be helped by hearing amplification. The level of such help and the satisfaction from it will very much depend on the level and type of hearing loss, the cognitive abilities of the hearing-impaired person, and the technology inside the hearing enhancement device.

To accommodate the extremely wide range of frequencies and intensities, the perception of sound by the human auditory system is very non-linear. Hearing loss is not a simple attenuation of sound perception, like what one experiences when covering her/his ears, inserting ear protection plugs, or listening through a wall. Such correction could easily have been done by amplifying sound with a bit of frequency equalization. A hearing-impaired person stops hearing soft sounds while continuing to hear loud sounds just as well as a person with normal hearing. The difference between soft and loud is frequency-dependent and highly individual.

In some cases, the boundary between “soft” and “loud” becomes very blurred. That is why hard of hearing people often complain that people around them are either mumbling (when they speak in a normal voice), or shouting at them when they try to speak louder.There is, simply, no “normal voice” region of loudness for them! Such cases are very difficult to correct, even with the most sophisticated hearing enhancement devices. The advantage of using Alango’s approach to hearing assessment and hearing enhancement for such difficult cases is discussed below.

3.2   Hearing Enhancement

3.2.1      Linear amplification

The first analog hearing aids worked as simple linear sound amplifiers of microphone signals. The next generation of such devices integrated a simple frequency equalization to consider the type of hearing loss. For example, higher frequencies could be amplified more to compensate for the typical sensorineural hearing loss commonly associated with aging. The biggest drawback of such devices was in the non-linearity of hearing loss (see explanation in Section ?4.1). While the user was able to hear soft sounds well, normal sounds became too loud, and loud sounds were transformed into extremely loud or even painful ones.

Surprisingly, such devices are still in wide use. Today they are not officially called hearing aids. They are called Personal Sound Amplification Products (PSAPs). To avoid extreme amplification, these devices are generally equipped with an easy to reach volume control that the user can manipulate quickly, as well as tone (bass/treble) control to tune the sound according to his/her specific hearing loss.

3.3   Non-linear amplification and multichannel dynamic range compression

To compensate for the non-linearity of hearing loss, it is quite natural to say that a good hearing enhancement device should be non-linear, amplifying sounds of different intensities differently. Soft sounds should be amplified more (bringing them into the audible region for a hearing impaired person) while loud sounds should not be amplified at all. Normal sounds should be somewhere in between, depending on the hearing loss, hearing preferences, and even the lifestyle of the user. This sound-level-dependent amplification technology is called “dynamic range compression” because it virtually squeezes the ambient sounds of very different intensities (wide dynamic range of natural sounds) into a much narrower range, one that the user’s impaired auditory system can accept.

As discussed above, hearing loss is highly individual and is not uniform in all frequencies. Some frequencies can be heard quite normally, some may be somewhat affected, and some may be lost completely. The level of hearing loss can also vary between the two ears of the same user. Following the logic described above it means that maximal amplification, and parameters of the dynamic range compression, should be different for different frequencies. To implement this idea, the whole audible frequency range is divided into various frequency regions by a set of so-called band-pass filters. These filters only pass along frequencies corresponding to their region to produce several band-limited audio streams. These audio streams are called “channels”. Each channel is processed (amplified) independently of the others. When all channels are processed with their own dynamic range compressors, the channels (individual audio streams) are combined into one output signal, which is then fed into the user’s ears.

All this is called “multi-channel dynamic range compression”. That is what advanced hearing enhancement devices do today to compensate for hearing loss, and it is all that even the most sophisticated analog devices can do. However, the parameters of individual dynamic range compressors defining what is a soft sound (maximal amplification applied) and what is a loud sound (no amplification applied) are not universal. In modern Personal Sound Amplification Products (PSAPs), these parameters are predefined by the device manufacturer based on what it determines to be typical hearing loss. Hearing aids do the same, but the processing parameters of individual frequency channels are defined during the device fitting procedure. This can be done manually by an audiologist, or by a hearing aid dispenser following a hearing test. The choice of parameters is rather complicated, and few people understand the connection between the hearing loss and the multi-channel dynamic range compression parameters. Whatever the hearing aid industry tells us, the truth is that in most cases the hearing aid devices are programmed automatically by a “prescription formula” developed by the hearing aid manufacturer, or the National Acoustic Laboratories (Australia). With hearing aids, you just cannot do it yourself. With Wear & Hear products, you can.

Hearing aid companies have been competing to feature the highest number of frequency channels in their high-level products. The number of channels is, definitely, a good way to persuade a user to buy a more expensive hearing aid. It is very easy to claim that 20 channels are better than 6. In rare cases, it is even true. However, in most cases, it doesn’t even matter. The result is exactly the same, while the money paid for the “latest and greatest” hearing aids is not!

3.4   Digital vs. analog hearing enhancement devices

In the past, every electronic device (including hearing aids) was analog. Analog signal processing may be very sophisticated, has virtually no latency and be extremely power efficient. However, it has serious limitations.

While there are still some widely used analog hearing enhancement devices on the market, the majority are now digital. “Digital” means that the analog (by nature) variations in the sound pressure level recorded by the device’s microphone are digitized by a Digital to Analog (A/D) converter – that is, they are translated into a sequence of digits. Each digit is proportional to the sound pressure variation at a specific moment in time.

The digits are processed (modified) by a digital signal processor inside a hearing enhancement device, and then converted again into the analog sound signal by a Digital to Analog (D/A) converter. The output is then reproduced by the device speaker. The theory is that the new, processed acoustic signal will be more comfortable, more intelligible and more pleasant for the user’s ears than the original sound wave hitting his/her eardrum.

Digital devices provide multiple advantages over analog ones, e.g., in the flexible way they perform and control multi-channel dynamic range compression, which is the basic function of hearing enhancement devices. Additionally, doing sound processing in a digital domain allows performing hearing enhancements that are virtually impossible to implement in an analog device. Digital sound enhancement has been the main (and perhaps the only) improvement that hearing aids have achieved since the first digital hearing aid was introduced in 1996.

Digital sound enhancement includes, but may not be limited to, the following technologies:

3.4.1      Acoustic feedback cancellation

Acoustic feedback is the result of acoustic coupling between the speaker in a hearing enhancement device and its microphone.

The microphone signal is amplified (based on the user’s level of hearing loss) and played back via the speaker. A part of the speaker signal is picked up by the microphone, amplified and played again, creating a vicious loop of “self-amplification”. This generally happens in specific frequencies, causing a loud whistling sound generated inside the device.

Acoustic feedback cancellation technologies allow significant reduction of “self-amplification”, thus allowing the use of higher amplification gains to benefit people with significant hearing loss.

Wear & Hear products integrate innovative approaches for acoustic feedback reduction that Alango Technologies has developed for the most demanding in-car communication systems. Additionally, Wear & Hear products benefit from specially designed 4-microphone acoustic feedback reduction technology. Actually, no feedback is heard with the maximal amplification, even when a user chooses the most open “free fit” silicon ear tips.

3.4.2      Stationary noise reduction

Stationary noises are those that are relatively constant, such as a fan, car, and air-conditioner. Their level and spectrum do not change significantly during a few second sample allowing the device to learn it and adapt its processing accordingly.

Digital stationary noise reduction technologies allow significant improvement in perceptual sound quality. Ambient noises amplified by a hearing enhancement device according to the user’s hearing loss are much more annoying to hearing-impaired people than to people with normal hearing. This is due to their limited auditory range (see Section ?4.1) so that the difference between the loud and soft sounds is reduced. Amplified distracting noises become audible, spoiling the quality of sounds of interest.

The main idea behind most noise reduction technologies used today consists of estimating the background noise power spectrum and subtracting it from the power spectrum of the microphone signal that mixes both noise and voice. If the estimate is correct the output will consist mostly of voices that the hearing enhancement device should amplify, based on the user’s hearing loss. The art of noise suppression consists of an accurate and fast estimation of the noise power spectrum and the right amount of “spectral subtraction”, which must be dynamic to avoid artifacts related to small and fast noise variations. The Alango noise suppression technology integrated into BeHear products has the uniform frequency resolution of 125Hz, which is narrower than the frequency resolution used in most hearing aids, and therefore it allows more precise restoration of the voice.

3.4.3      Acoustic Beamforming and Directional Hearing

Most modern hearing aids today utilize two microphones to create “directivity”. This allows attenuation of signals coming from directions outside the user’s field of view.

This is useful for face-to-face conversation in noisy places. Noise is the main enemy of hard of hearing people. With a directional microphone the user benefits from an improved signal to noise ratio, allowing him/her to concentrate on the communication task and be less distracted by loud ambient noises. There are different digital signal processing technologies for acoustic beamforming, which can be fixed, adaptive or mixed. Fixed beamforming is the simplest one. It provides the smallest improvement, but it is very easy to implement, and it is less risky in terms of mistakenly cancelling useful sounds. Adaptive technologies are more efficient, but they may require more computational power, and are prone to distortion of sound due to wrong adaptation decisions.

Wear & Hear products utilize adaptive microphone array technologies that have been proven in tens of millions of leading brand name Bluetooth headsets. Users of BeHear NOW and BeHear ACCESS benefit from four integrated microphones, while BeHear BUSINESS employs dual microphones for beamforming.

3.4.4      Wind noise reduction

Wind is considered a big problem for hearing aid users.

In general, wind is a nice, steady movement of air (scientifically called laminar) that does not carry any noise with it. However, when wind strikes an obstacle, the steady air flow is transformed into a chaotic one (scientifically called turbulent). This chaotic air flow near the microphone hole creates random variations of air pressure on the microphone membrane, which are recorded as a typical chaotic electrical signal called “wind noise”. The standard remedy for microphone wind noise reduction consists of using a wind shield covering the microphone. It is typically made of fur or special fabric. Obviously, it is not applicable for tiny hearing aids, or other hearing enhancement devices.

Wind noise can be, to some extent, reduced by digital signal processing technology. The ability to detect and reduce wind noise very much depends on the number of microphones integrated into a device, and their locations. Modern hearing aids integrate two very closely spaced microphones used for directionality (see Section ?4.4.3) that limits the ability to cope with wind noise in real outdoor situations. Actually, hearing aids become totally useless in high wind.

Four microphones, separated by a much larger distance, are integrated into Wear & Hear headsets. These microphones are utilized by Alango’s proprietary digital signal processing technology that provides almost complete wind noise immunity, even in very challenging wind conditions.

4    Wear & Hear products advantages over modern hearing aids

Wear & Hear hearing enhancement headsets include the same types of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technologies that can be found in modern hearing aids. All DSP technologies in BeHear headsets have been designed internally and are based on almost two decades of practical experience of improving sound in consumer electronics voice communication devices. Most are field proven, having been used in tens of millions of consumer electronics devices.

It may be difficult to compare DSP technologies integrated into Wear & Hear products with those inside brand-name hearing aids. Since we don’t have access to competitors technologies, we can only compare the products and their potential. Such comparisons can only be subjective, or would require a large scientific study involving a large group of people wearing different devices and providing reports on their subjective experiences. Today even the five big hearing aid companies do not do that. Tomorrow, we will do that. However, even today there are multiple objective potential advantages in Wear & Hear products, in terms of sound quality and their ability to compensate for hearing loss, compared with traditional hearing aids.

4.1   Advanced Digital Sound Processing

4.1.1      The Power

Digital signal processing technologies are the heart of modern hearing enhancement devices, such as digital hearing aids or Alango Wear & Hear headsets. That’s what makes them different and, potentially, better than the old generation of analog devices. Of course, not all technologies are equal. What they have in common is that they all require Digital Signal Processor chips (DSPs) to perform all the number-crunching operations required to enhance the input microphone signal according to the user’s hearing loss, eliminate noise, and cancel acoustic feedback. These DSPs consume power which is roughly proportional to the number of arithmetic (addition and multiplication) and logical (yes/no decision) operations they need to perform in one second. Obviously, better quality requires more operations and thus consumes more power, shortening the device’s battery life. Hearing aid manufacturers are struggling to reduce the size of hearing aids to make them invisible. This requires them to compromise on battery size and, consequently, the power of the Digital Signal Processor chips they can use in their products. Eventually, this is reflected in the suboptimal quality of sound that could have be achievable had the limitation of the battery size been removed. This limitation is non-existent in Wear & Hear devices.

BeHear NOW and BeHear ACCESS use large rechargeable batteries allowing continuous operation of built-in Digital Signal Processors that perform 120 million operations per second. This is about an order of magnitude more than in most digital hearing aids on the market today. While the quality of the sound that the user hears does not exclusively depend on the DSP power, it does indicate the larger potential of Wear & Hear products to produce quality sound as compared to traditional hearing aids.

4.1.2      The number of microphones and noise reduction

Humans as well as other living beings with hearing sense have two ears. Sounds from different directions come to our ears at slightly different times, with different strength. Our brain utilizes these differences to identify the sound source direction and differentiate between sounds of interest, and other sounds that we consider noise. A typical modern behind-the-ear (BHE) hearing aid integrates two closely spaced microphones to enhance sound emitted from the front direction. That is also what the BeHear BUSINESS monaural headset does. However, the in-front-of-the-ear positions of BeHear BUSINESS microphones, as well as a larger distance between the two microphones, has multiple advantages over behind-the-ear positions of the microphones in a typical hearing aid. This, together with the much higher available computational power of the built in DSP chip, make a big difference in the ability to improve the rejection of noises coming from the back and side directions.

Due to their neck loop form factor, BeHear NOW and BeHear ACCESS take a different approach. They both utilize four high quality microphones. Two of the microphones are integrated into the two earphones, benefiting the user by being close to the natural location of the ear canal. The other two are in the left and right control boxes, respectively. 

To get an idea, just think of an augmented human with four ears. Two are located in the normal positions and two are located on the chest. The ones on the chest are less sensitive to noises coming from behind, and they don’t depend on the orientation of the head. A sophisticated digital signal processing technology was developed by Alango Technologies engineers especially for this type of product. It utilizes the full power of the integrated DSP chip to reduce ambient noise, virtually eliminate wind noise, and cancel acoustic feedback.

4.1.3      EasyListen?

Hearing can be enhanced, but never completely restored. Even with all the advanced hearing amplification and noise reduction technologies available, people with hearing loss often experience difficulties understanding fast speech. Normal speech may also be too fast to them. This is especially true during phone conversations, where there are no visual signals to add comprehension to the dialogue.

Wear & Hear products integrate a proprietary digital signal processing technology named EasyListen allowing the user to slow down incoming speech during a mobile phone conversation, which can greatly improve its intelligibility and comprehension for a hearing-impaired user. EasyListen helps users with normal hearing as well, especially when conversing over the phone in a distracting environment, or in a foreign language. This technology is proprietary and cannot be found in any hearing aid today.

4.1.4      ListenThrough?

Even people with normal hearing become “deaf” (detached) while listening to loud music streaming from their phones.

Wear & Hear products integrate a proprietary technology called ListenThrough which allows the user to hear voices, car horns, alarms, and other important sounds “through music”. To avoid being masked by loud music, these important sounds are amplified. This is another technology from which users with normal hearing can also benefit for their safety and convenience.

4.2   Smartphone application

Wear & Hear headsets come with a free smartphone application called W&H BeHear that supports both iOS and Android. While the headsets contain seven built-in control buttons that allow you to use it without a smartphone, this application enables full control of the headsets, including personalization and real-time customization.

4.2.1      Hearing assessment and sound personalization

The Wear & Hear application allows the user to assess his/her own hearing. The whole procedure is simple and user friendly. It takes about 5 minutes and has two operational modes.

The simple, basic mode is similar to a standard hearing test that is conducted in an audiologist’s office. The user hears tones of different frequencies and adjusts a slider to indicate the softest tone for that specific frequency which is still audible. That is how hearing thresholds are evaluated. If performed correctly by the user, the results have been proven to be quite accurate and comparable to a hearing test conducted by an audiologist. Of course, they cannot be used for any medical purpose, and only serve to optimize the device for the specific user.

In the advanced mode, in addition to the hearing threshold, the most comfortable sound levels for each frequency are evaluated. After completing the advanced hearing assessment both the hearing thresholds and the most comfortable levels are automatically taken into account while computing the optimal processing parameters of hearing enhancement for all hearing situations: live conversations, audio streaming, TV listening, phone calls, live music, etc.

4.2.2      Real time sound adjustment

An automated procedure can rarely be optimal for all users. That is why people typically need to visit an audiologist between 3-5 times to get fit for their hearing aids. Yet, the fitting they get is only optimal to the acoustic conditions where it is performed. Obviously, nobody fits hearing aids on a busy street or in a crowded restaurant. Wear & Hear devices allow a user to do just that. Using the W&H BeHear smartphone application the user can adjust the sound volume, the level of noise reduction, and even the parameters of multi-channel dynamic range compression, in a simple and intuitive manner. In that sense, Wear & Hear devices give users unprecedented real time control of their hearing.

4.3   Better acoustic components

Hearing aids are very compact devices and it is a very well-known fact that the quality of acoustic components is directly related to their size. That is why even with all the efforts and money invested, mobile phones still cannot sound as good as hi-fi speakers, or even portable loudspeakers. That is why professional microphones used on stage or in recording studios are not the tiny ones used in hearing aids.

It is also why the operational frequency range of earphone speakers used in Wear & Hear products far exceeds frequency ranges of speakers used in modern hearing aids, in both the low and high frequency regions.

While the quality of the microphones used in Wear & Hear headsets is similar to that of those used in the best hearing aids, the price of hearing aid microphones is much higher, contributing to the much higher cost of the devices overall.

4.4   Upgradability

The software in modern hearing aids is not upgradable. As such, hearing aids cannot be improved, only replaced. Each new top of the line hearing aid model is proclaimed by the manufacturer as the next big thing. You just need to buy it again, and again...

Like modern mobile phones, the software in Wear & Hear headsets is upgradable. We are constantly working to make Wear & Hear products better by updating their firmware and the smartphone application. Existing integrated technologies are improved, and new technologies are introduced. Just wait for a message in your smartphone application, and then confirm the update. We hope that after the upgrade you will like Wear & Hear headsets even more. Stay tuned.

5    The Wear & Hear Short-term Roadmap (2020-2021)

5.1   Planned software upgrades for BeHear devices

5.1.1      CROS and BiCROS

CROS (Contra-lateral Routing Of Signal) and BiCROS (Bilateral CROS) functionality will help patients with unilateral deafness (where one ear is completely deaf and cannot perceive any sound). The other ear can be normal or have some hearing loss. The principle of CROS operation consists of using a microphone on the deaf side and reproducing its signal on the healthy side.

5.1.2      Tinnitus masking

Tinnitus is the perception of noise or ringing in the ears. It is a widespread problem that affects about 15 to 20 percent of people. We plan to generate masking noises to help alleviate tinnitus. The user will be able to adjust the central frequency and spectral width of the masking noise. No device on the market today features this functionality.

5.2   New devices

The following products will be based on a new generation hardware platform that is currently under development.

5.2.1      BeHear ACTIVE

True Wireless (TWS) waterproof earphones with hearing enhancement for sportsmen and people with an active lifestyle.

5.2.2      BeHear BUDS (internal name)

True Wireless (TWS) waterproof earphones similar to Apple Airpods. In addition to music play and phone calls, they will also provide hearing enhancement