Not sure if your hearing is as good as it used to be? The AirPods Pro 2nd-gen now has both a hearing test and a hearing aid inside.
Bands, gigs, loud music, and kids all have two things in common: they all can be very expensive and they all can make your hearing worse.
That’s one of the lessons from being a parent who’s been in a band who has seen plenty of gigs and stood in front of more than enough loud speaker boxes over time, and is surprised his hearing isn’t worse than what it is.
Depending on when you grew up and when you realised the hairs in your ears don’t magically regrow when damaged, you may have started to wear protective hearing plugs at an earlier age, doing what you can to prevent hearing loss and stave off issues before they happen. But then it’s possible that you had kids, and that plan was thrown out, too.
Between screaming and yelling and high pitched sounds aplenty, there’s a good chance that if you’re over the age of 30, your hearing may not be as good as it once was.
You might have switched to a pair of great headphones to mitigate any further damage, keeping the volume lower to stop hearing damage in its tracks, but hearing loss could still be there, and there’s not a whole lot that can be done about it.
Over the years, we’ve seen earphone makers try all sorts of approaches to improve the sound relative to a person’s hearing, from the NDIS-approved hearing-test headphones from Australia’s Audeara to the unusual otoacoustic Nuraphone headphone idea that became a great pair of ear-testing earbuds and was eventually acquired by Denon.
Apple has also been trying to work out what it can do, and last year showed that it had found a way to turn its AirPods Pro into a hearing aid, complete with a hearing test.
That sort of development requires local approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and fortunately, Australia seems to now have it, with the feature rolling out this week specifically to AirPods Pro 2nd-gen owners.
It’ll arrive whether you have the USB-C version of the AirPods Pro 2nd-gen or the Lightning case they launched with, but only on the AirPods Pro 2nd-gen, because it has the hardware needed to process what’s going on.
Specifically, that includes a hearing test having you touch the screen when you hear a tone in each air, and then if your hearing is bad enough, a clinical-grade hearing aid able to boost the sound relative to your hearing loss. The feature won’t activate if your hearing loss is mild relative to your test, though you can use a “Loud Sound Reduction” mode to reduce loud sound using algorithms.
The new features will work across iPhone and iPad, with macOS supporting the hearing aid feature, but not the hearing test. It’s also recommended for folks aged 18 and above, but not below largely because their ears are possibly still changing, and it may not be beneficial for them.
