Verifying by sound - there’s no mistaking it. I know this as there’s a 1 in 100 bug where sometimes media/call assist don’t turn on. Removing and reinserting AirPods usually fixes it.
My guess is they will contain to use the programmed until you update a new one. You might need to turn on the media assist feature in the device with the different account but I bet the audiogram is still ready for use in the AirPods.
If I lent my AirPods to someone who didn’t even pair them with a device they’d still get a hearing aid feature with my audiogram. No different than lending your hearing aid to someone….
The Boots one was done 17th July & Specsavers on 15th July
The audiogram in my sig is the Specsavers one
As I said I didn’t do an iphone one - I just manually fed the Boots one into the iphone audiogram.
Yea, feeding both audiogram values into the iphone & switching between them would be ideal
One thought occurs to me - if hearing varies from day to day & based on different circumstances then an average of the two audiograms would probably be a good compromise? The diff in low freqs aren’t really of concern? (except for music?) for speech intelligibility - just the HF
I know both the Boots and Specsavers chains (my mum uses Specsavers) but I don’t know how they do hearing tests and therefore how accurate they are likely to be.
Irish or UK forum members or Audiologists can probably chime in here.
It seems to me you need to find out what you actually looks like, there is quite a difference particularly at low frequencies.
What did Boots / Specsavers recommend for hearing aids Are you using any other hearing aids?
I know both the Boots and Specsavers chains (my mum uses Specsavers) but I don’t know how they do hearing tests and therefore how accurate they are likely to be.
Irish or UK forum members or Audiologists can probably chime in here.
It seems to me you need to find out what you audiogram actually looks like, there is quite a difference particularly at low frequencies.
What did Boots / Specsavers recommend for hearing aids Are you using any other hearing aids?
Yes, Boots & Specsavers both do free hearing aid tests, here.
I was honest & told them that I was going to get the Airpods and check out the hearing assist - they both said that was a good idea so didn’t recommend any hearing aids but said any would be substantially more expensive than the airpods.
Yes, I have the plots - the specsavers one is in my signature - I don’t know how to post an image here for the Boots audiogram or the one I calculated as the rounded average of both audiograms.
I will need access to an iphone to experiment with different audiogram settings which can be switched between, I believe. The new freq adjustments & settings are uploaded to the airpods so one can switch between them.
Do you know if the media assist also works with any other devices such as a windows pc? It works with any Apple device I have tried including ones not signed into any account etc or one with an old macOS which thinks my APP3 are generic Bluetooth headphones. it doesn’t work with a Samsung TV I tried. Trying to figure out the limitation here, I had perhaps wrongly assumed it would work with any device. Maybe it only works for specific sample rates or bit depths, not sure.
AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3 provide a clinical-grade Hearing Aid feature for perceived mild to moderate hearing loss, as well as a Media Assist feature that enhances the clarity of music, video, and calls.
AirPods Pro 3 with latest firmware (as of a few days ago)
IOS (used to configure AirPods): Media assist works for streaming and calls/FaceTime
iPad (same account): Media assist works for streaming and calls/facetime
MacBook (same account): Media assist works for streaming (and presumably calls/FaceTime)
MacBook (no iCloud login, and older macOS such that APP3 looks like generic bluetooth headphones): Media assist works for streaming and for zoom/teams/webex
Apple TV 4K (same iCloud account): Media assist works for streaming. (OcramSagev doesn’t have this working)
Samsung TV (~5 years old): Media assist doesn’t work. Sound quality is also sub-standard even allowing for the lack of media assist and the connection is unstable. Makes me suspect media assist only works with some codecs/bitrates. Wouldn’t want to use this even without hearing loss.
Garmin smart watch (user costal_california) : Media assist works for music. Edit: Internet searching suggests Garmin supports the AAC codec, I wonder if this is important.
Windows PC: (OcramSagev doesn’t have this working). I will test when I get proper access to one which isn’t very old, and will edit this comment.
Android phone: I will test when I get the chance, and will edit this comment.
Amazon Echo Show 8 : Media assist works for music. General audio quality is poor though.
(reply to now deleted comment) There isn’t a media asssit setting on Apple TV. I setup the AirPods on my iPhone then connected to them from the Apple TV. Audio is definitely corrected otherwise I get little treble.
When I stream with my Airpod Pro 2’s using Hearing Assistance and Media Assist it is normally in transparency mode. I can hear music streaming when running (Garmin Watch), listening to music / video on an iPhone / iPad, but also hear my surroundings (especially important when running) or someone talking to me.
In transparency mode it will certainly use hearing assistance for the surrounding sounds and I would be really surprised if simultaneous streaming from any source was different?
When I run I generally use Deezer (Playlists and Flow) downloaded to my Garmin running watch. I pay for the Deezer “HiFi” FLAC stream, but I doubt, but don’t know that the Garmin watch is downloading FLAC streams. Anyway I do know it sounds very good through the Airpod Pro 2’s.
Streaming from the iPhone/iPad is a mixture of YouTube etc video + Radio Paradise (FLAC Stream) or Deezer (FLAC stream). All sound good and Radio Paradise and Deezer sound great in either Transparency Mode (normally) or Noise Cancellation (on a plane etc).
That’s a good question, but I think I can answer it.
Short version: I think live audio and streamed audio are handled independently, then mixed.
Long version:
The AirPods appear to do the based compression for streaming and the compression for live microphone audio (transparency mode) independently then add the output linearly (like regular audio mixing). A few things strongly suggest that: (i) There’s an article from NAL (of fame) which shows different gain curves for media streaming than for live audio. (To me calls sounds like they use gain curves closer to or same as live HA audio.) (ii) If I take a live white noise source and have someone talking live near it I will hear a small amount of distortion in the voice, but if I have the same live white noise source and the same person talking via recorded streaming I do not hear the distortion in the voice. Likely this is because compression is non-linear, adding two signals then compressing does not give the same outcome as compressing two signals independently then adding. (iii) The amplification and brightness controls do not influence streamed audio or calls. As you note transparency mode live audio and streaming work at the same time seamlessly.
For high quality audio streaming the AirPods require the sending device to use the AAC codec (doesn’t matter what format your media files are stored in, they can be recoded/transcoded). AAC, and mostly all other lossy audio compression codecs, is based on a MDCT (modified discrete cosine transform) which in a hand-waving way encodes the time domain audio signal into the frequency domain prior to lossy compression to reduce the bit rate to be sent via bluetooth. I would hazard a guess that the audiogram correction compression has been directly applied in this frequency domain representation since it would use less processing bandwidth and energy, and therefore may only be coded to work with certain codec representations / bit rates / bit depths. That’s certainly what I would consider if I were doing this.
Another observation is that of the sound of sudden sounds like dropping a spoon on a hard floor. With live audio, the compressor takes time to respond, as initially it’s unknown if this is a soft or loud sound, and the compressor will have the gain up in a quiet room, so that spoon sounds really loud. If the compressor has already reduced the gain, for example you have a loud white noise source and then drop the spoon, that spoon sounds quieter. Now if you record a spoon dropping (need to use a microphone setup with no automatic gain control) and play it back via streaming you don’t get this ‘extra loud spoon behavior’. I would guess that some of that is the lower gain curves, but also since the streamed audio is almost certainly buffered in the AirPods, the compression can be adjusted ‘ahead of time’ before it is converted to sound, effectively there is time to better deal with impulse sounds, which you can’t do with live audio so easily without adding unacceptable latency.
The AirPods have two features (i) hearing protection which uses the compressor to limit live audio, seems to be around 82-85 db when I did some ad-hoc testing with the Apple Watch DB meter, and toggling it on and off (ii) headphone safety which limits streamed audio to a limit you can adjust. These appear to operate independently as far as I can tell from listening. That’s actually ok as if I’ve got my logarithms right adding two 80db sources gives 83db for example. (Google agrees)
For high quality audio streaming the AirPods require the sending device to use the AAC codec (doesn’t matter what format your media files are stored in, they can be recoded/transcoded). AAC, and mostly all other lossy audio compression codecs,
It is kind of hard to find a definitive answer, but it seems like my current Garmin Fenix 8 Pro (and previous Garmin 945LTE) actually just use the basic SBC codec for music (and yup they are also likely storing them in a lossy format as well).
Garmin’s focus is long battery life (27 days in smart watch mode) and support for pretty much any sport/exercise/outdoor adventure. With GPS/LTE/Satellite connectivity I guess advanced audio codecs was (probably correctly) not a priority…
For running/working out music sounds good through the Airpod Pro 2’s especially with background noise etc. I am certain media assist/hearing assistance are on.
Streaming from Deezer’s or Radio Paradise FLAC streams from an iPhone 16 Pro (which I am doing now) which maybe sounds a little better, but the Garmin streaming through the Airpod Pro 2’s works great for its purpose (running/workouts).
Edit: Just listened to Peter Gabriel i/o (Bright Side mix on the iPhone and I think Bright Side mix on the Garmin both from Deezer) from both an iPhone and the Garmin Watch and both sound pretty good and similar (and definitely have media assist working)
Does seem like garmin uses SBC from reading around I agree. SBC has flexible bit rate and in some cases stereo vs joint stereo. My guess is only some combinations of these work for media assist.
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