Bringing back analog hearing aids

This thread is quite interesting. If an analog aid was available, I might buy it to listen to music and wear it in the home, but as soon as I had to engage with the world, the digitals would go back in.

I have a severe loss now. With analogs:

• I would struggle to hear in the car
• I would find it impossible to converse in a noisy environment - this includes pubs, clubs, canteens, any gathering where there are multiple talkers and a general hub bub of noise.
• I would find it difficult to converse in the street, as car noise would drown out conversation
• I would find it impossible to converse on a mobile phone
• Unless a landline had a T switch, it would be very difficult to converse
• I wouldn’t be able to listen to music with headphones, as they would squeal

So? Sorry guys (and gals) - no thanks. No revisionism from me. And I wore them for around 23 years.

@my57chevy said:

I was approaching it from a strictly manufacturing direction. I completely feel that they could make a very nice analog for the INSANE prices they charge for HAs. Yes I know research and development costs etc. Simply put, they charge $4000+ because they can.

I agree with what you say in principle but the margins are not that high. These are FDA certified devices, and I’ve learned something about that this year in my startup. For each new model they come out with, a hearing aid company spends about 10 million dollars and a full year of thousands of pages of risk-mitigation recordkeeping, in addition to the microelectronics development costs. And they release it into a competitive, relatively small niche market.

I got my M-70R’s for $2000 each. That’s not too bad. Did they make a healthy profit? Yes, big time. Are they stealing like that asshole who raised the price of insuling 1000%? No. They’re doing an honest business.

Somewhere I have read that the cost of a digital hearing aid, at the factory shipping door, is $150 each.

@haggis said:

These are FDA certified devices

Don’t even get me started

@haggis said:

I got my M-70R’s for $2000 each

Was that cash price or with insurance?

@Sierra said:

Somewhere I have read that the cost of a digital hearing aid, at the factory shipping door, is $150 each.

I would have expected about half that but interesting.

The factory production costs still don’t represent the R&D and FDA Cert costs.

It was always my understanding that the actual cost of the materials was pretty low (I’ve heard varying accounts, but at least some place it well under $100) for hearing aids. So, at least part of the markup is marketing and R&D. To my mind, one of the benefits of analog is that they could be sold so cheaply because they really don’t require the marketing or R&D that is currently behind digital tech. Selling analog again might also be an easy way for the manufacturers to get the U.S. Congress off their backs. It seems we’re not the only ones who have noticed the high prices in this industry.

Just in terms of the actual reason why there’s no analogue; it’s a function of the supply of circuits.

All manufacturers want to get the bast margins, so the die costs and fabrication runs are cheaper in the millions. Would you produce one IC that deals with all the consumer needs by being highly editable, good with feedback, communication performance and low power requirement that you can sell across your entire range by hobbling or enabling the eeprom.

Or would you choose to make low volume, less editable multiple versions that need extra device controls or at least another version of your software to program, separate programming hardware - bearing in mind that you’ll sell even fewer because the feature-set is hugely limited. You might be able to shift a few to emerging markets, bet even there people want to jump straight to digital without the intermediate evolution - And in truth, why not; the volumes of digital you are doing mean that the marginal costs are far lower anyway.

In terms of manufacturing you’re asking international suppliers to make you a CRT television with an analogue tuner, or a car without ABS and Airbags due to some unsubstantiated ‘quality’ perception. I get it - my dad has a Daimler (like a Mk2 Jag) - it’s a quality car, but would he swap it for his daily (a 2016 - E-Class) ?

Greetings,

I like your comparison with the autos and am really not here to throw rocks at any available digital technology out there. Just wish to add that just the inferior DSP processing latency of even the best of the digital devices (5-10 mSec) do not provide the horsepower to enable clear speech in noise (brain detects sub-mSecs of delay) and warm/natural audio of analog.

We can now find that highly configurable analog that actually had all the critical bells and whistles and provide that Porsche (911 Carrera) horsepower and performance at the price of a VW !!

If we agree that the ultimate goal is to bring hearing as close to normal hearing as possible, letting our brain do all the processing needed, then all the bells and whistles of the digital tech. fall short of this goal.

There will always be trade-offs in what you get and what you pay for and hope we always measure the patient satisfaction outcome as the most important indicator. As a consumer, we should all have the choice and option to decide after trial of the devices, which has not been the case for years as many have so noted that high performance, fully configurable mutil channel, multi band analog have not been available.

It is a pleasure to finally be able to bring a fully configurable Porsche 911 version of the analog devices to those who wish to experience it again and/or for the first time.

I am not sure if it is appropriate to post technical product/device specification and am happy to provide further information to everyone interested. Kindly contact me and I will gladly share as much information as needed.

@Smart_Analog said:

If we agree that the ultimate goal is to bring hearing as close to normal hearing as possible, letting our brain do all the processing needed, then all the bells and whistles of the digital tech. fall short of this goal.

No, the goal is to understand speech. No, modern hearing aids are amazing. I’m hearing things I haven’t heard since I was a kid. My microwave keypad makes a chirp sound when you press a number. Hummingbirds make a fast chirp-chirp when they are chasing each other around. So besides hearing speech much better I’m also getting normal sound benefits.

I learned to drive in a 1960 VW Karman-Ghia. I have fond memories of that. I want nothing to do with a 1960 VW today.

I have dead spots in my hearing, in the high frequencies. Aggressive frequency transposition allows me to hear things that I really should not be able to hear, with my hearing loss. Analog would be useless now that I’ve experienced well adjusted modern hearing aids.

Thanks Don

It’s wonderful to hear your amazing experience and satisfaction. Kudos to the folks who fit you with them as well.

Understanding speech in noise is actually one of the key areas where the analog"s 10’X-20X faster processing speeds provide benefits in. DSP systems chop up the audio into channels and then try to patch them back after processing them , but without the horsepower, the amplified/processed portions of these patched audio packets arrive into your brain with 10 to 20 mSec delays vs the non-amplified sounds arriving real time (open fit). The brain clearly detects such delays and when we have multiple sound sources (noise), the brain has a very difficult time to separate speech.

Until one has actually experienced hearing the difference between the high performance analog and digital devices by wearing them both in noise, the true results will remain to be explored.

OK. I personally think this should be handled by forum admin. My opinion is that you are marketing a product in a very polite way and using flowering language. I don’t believe this belongs on the forum and at minimum ought to be in the online sellers section.

Thanks to all for your comments. I’m not trying to provide a marketing pitch. Just relief to those who have enjoyed the analog devices and are frustrated that they can’t find them.

We have them and happy to provide these devices should there be interest.

Warmest regards.

I’m not interested in cars, just hearing aids.

@Smart_Analog said:

I’m not trying to provide a marketing pitch.

You have not provided one single fact – just marketing hype.