The Apple “live listen” mode.
On a post-iPhone 11, anyone can speak to your hearing aids via the iPhone’s high-quality mic, close to their mouth ‒ rather than “distantly”, through the hearing aid’s lower quality mics.
Apple introduced in iPhone 15. Real-time captioning is now a “hidden feature” of Live
Listen, which also requires iOs 26 (Sept., 2025), plus an iPhone 15, 16, or 17.
It works! With high accuracy! I was stunned! In years gone by, court stenographers were paid
big bucks to caption TV broadcasts in real time!
However, I’d rather not pass around my costly iPhone. And, if someone other than me is
speaking, I’d want to see the “real time” captions on my iPhone.
The solution? A high-quality remote wireless mic, rather than a remote iPhone!
BOYA mini 2 Wireless Microphone for iPhone 15/16/17 & Android,AI Noise...8
BOYA mini 2 Wireless Microphone for iPhone 15/16/17 & Android,AI Noise Cancellation, 48 kHz/24Bit, App Control, 30H Battery Life with Charging Case, Wireless Lavalier Microphone for Vlogging Recording : Amazon.ca: Musical Instruments, Stage & Studio
Two superb, studio quality, condenser wireless mics (24 bit samples, 48 kHz sampling rate, 120
db max Sound Pressure Level), plus a receiver (100 m range) which plugs into the iPhone’s
USB-C port ‒ ~ $60!
First test, Dec. 24, 2025. A wireless mic sitting close to my TV’s speaker was transmitting
mainly “room-noise free” speech to my iPhone, and real-time captioned by the iPhone ‒ with “cleaner” speech sent directly into my hearing aids: the accurate captions scrolling on the iPhone’s
display!
Sitting several meters from my TV and flipping live listen on and off was startling! An obvious
improvement when live listen was selected. I then took my iPhone downstairs, and listened to
the upstairs TV sound on my hearing aids ‒ and read real-time captions on my iPhone screen!
My first thought? “No one could have done this before iOs 26 came out in Sept.
Other situations for remote mic “clean speech plus real-time captioning”?
In a convention hall, place a wireless mic on the speaker’s podium, and clear speech plus
captions no matter where you sit.
At a meeting of several participants seated around a conference table, one or two strategically-
placed wireless table mics provides you with clear voices plus captions no matter where you are sitting.
At a video viewing party for a televised sports event, in lieu of annoying on-screen captions,
place one wireless mike near the TVs speaker, and offer the other to anyone who wants to
converse with you.
Apple’s Tim Cook might be excited to see and hear what Apple AI and their ongoing support for the
hearing-disabled has wrought! Apple could easily add to the “live listen display” a video of the
speaker, and with the telephoto lens of 16 Pro and 17 Pro especially, the hearing-impaired
holder of an iPhone could easily do long-distance lip-reading via video! Clean speech plus
captions plus lip-reading! Triple redundancy!
It worked: out of the box! “Plug-and-play”!
No hardware switches, or app “options-selection”, required!
In fact, with near-perfect captioning of 24 bit speech, real-time “text to speech synthesis” via a powerful signal processing iPhone might create “noise-free” clean speech, tailored to a hearing-
hampered listener. Of far better quality than possible when real speech ‒ embedded in severe noise ‒ is amplified and relatively primitively digital signal processed by a tiny hearing aid
powered by a miniscule battery.
The hearing aid would still deliver the speech into the ear ‒ but first, a super high quality mic
(impossible to contain within a tiny hearing aid shell) would deliver 24-bit speech to the iPhone
for “state-of-the art”, real-time digital signal processing.
Compare the two tiny mic openings in hearing aid shells to the array of openings in the Boya wireless microphone. Much more speech energy impinges upon a much larger Boya transducer.
Note: You must enable Live Listen by swiping down from upper right, and the click
on the ear icon in a grey circle. Then click on the mic icon at left of the Live Listen
oblong (third down). Then touch “Live Listen on” to show captions.
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