When Sony entered the over-the-counter hearing aid market two years ago, it did so with a pair of products: the CRE-C10 and the more expensive CRE-E10. I was dazzled by the minuscule C10—it’s still one of the hearing aid options I recommend the most—and assumed the E10 would be even more impressive. Now that I’ve finally landed a pair of E10 aids to test, I can assure you that the E10 isn’t so much an upgrade to the C10 as it is a wholly different class of product with its own pros and cons.
While both the C10 and E10 rely on an in-ear earbud-like design conceit, their general approach is considerably different. While the 1-gram C10 fits nearly entirely inside the ear, invisible enough to require a small retrieval wire to remove it, the 2.94-gram E10 is much more bulbous and visible. It looks more like a standard Bluetooth earbud than any other hearing aid I’ve tested, filling the concha with its rounded body. Since, as the old saying goes, all concha are not created equal, your comfort level while wearing these hearing aids may vary considerably. In my ears, the fit was snug but not tight—comfortable for wearing for a few hours but not all day. Sony provides just four pairs of eartips you can experiment with to help improve the fit.
Photograph: Sony
The other big difference between the C10 and E10 is that while the C10 uses replaceable hearing aid batteries, the E10 features a more common rechargeable battery. The extra size of the device lets the E10 work for up to 26 hours (without streaming). The USB-C connectible and Qi-compatible charger provides enough juice for an additional two to three recharges.
Despite their larger size, the CRE-E10 aids do not feature any external controls, which is understandable because controls would be hard to access based on the way the aids sit in the ear. Instead, all controls are situated in Sony’s Hearing Control app (Android, iOS). This is the same app used for the CRE-C10, so I already had it installed, but I ran into immediate problems because the old aids were still registered to the app.
Photograph: Sony
To set up new aids, you have to remove the old ones from the app. To do that, Hearing Control requires you to enter a code sent to your registered email address. Naturally, I never received the code, so I couldn’t install the new set of aids. Eventually, Sony tech support instructed me to delete the app altogether and set it up again with a different email address—perhaps not the most elegant solution, but it worked to get me up and running.
Founded in 2018, Orka Labs feels like a bigger and more established hearing aid company than it is, with polished hardware that’s now on its second edition.
The Orka Two is something of a hybrid between prescription and over-the-counter hearing aids. The devices are registered as prescription-class aids but are sold online as OTC products. Professional medical consultations and adjustments are available (and included in the price) but are not required if you decide to go it alone.
The hardware is traditional in form, a behind-the-ear model with receivers that snake into the ear canal via flexible wires. But while they are a bit oversized in comparison to similar designs (and rather heavy at 3.8 grams each), they are distinguished by their glossy AirPod-white color and curvy, teardrop design. The units carry no physical controls, which further improves their sleekness. For behind-the-ear hearing aids, these look about as good as you could expect—and much better than the usual industrial-gray aids that are now so commonplace.
As with most over-ear aids, I found the units a little clumsy to fit and in need of significant fidgeting to situate them properly in my ears. The usual collection of open and closed tips is included in the box. While I normally find that medium-sized tips fit perfectly for me, I found all but the smallest uncomfortably large.
Photograph: Orka
In keeping with its hybrid design, Orka offers two ways to configure the units. There’s a capable hearing test built into the app, which can be used to quickly make the appropriate settings. Alternatively, if you have a professional audiogram, you can snap a photo and upload it through the app. Then Orka’s in-house audiologists will tune your aids accordingly (in one business day). Any adjustments can be made by emailing or calling Orka for tweaks, though the company notes its “remote consultation” feature, where you can schedule an appointment directly through the app, is currently being revamped and is offline.
Orka’s app is straightforward to the point of being idiot-proof, with two primary operating modes. “Normal” is the low-environmental-noise mode that relies on the settings made via your audiogram or in situ hearing test, while “In Noise” is, well, self-explanatory. Here, Orka gets more aggressive with settings, using an AI algorithm to adjust its settings dynamically in response to your environment. A beam-shaping option in the In Noise mode lets you target your hearing on a single person or on “everyone.” Volume can be adjusted universally or individually for each ear.
As noted earlier, there are no physical controls on the units. Unusually, hardware controls are found on the charging case (which is good for about three charges). Here you’ll find a program button that cycles through the two operational modes and another pair of buttons for adjusting volume. Pay close attention: Volume up is paradoxically the button on the left and volume down is on the right. Despite the reversal, I ultimately found the case-mounted buttons a lot more convenient than fumbling behind my ears to find the right buttons. For users with mobility impairments, this could be a game changer.
Republicans in the US House of Representatives publicly grilled infectious disease specialist Peter Daszak today during a long-awaited hearing on Capitol Hill. In their questioning they suggested that Daszak and the nonprofit organisation he heads, EcoHealth Alliance in New York City, knowingly conducted dangerous research by studying coronaviruses with a virology lab in Wuhan, China, where the first COVID-19 cases were reported during the pandemic.
US COVID-origins hearing puts scientific journals in the hot seat
Democrats disputed that there was any evidence that EcoHealth played a part in triggering the pandemic, but did hold Daszak’s feet to the fire over his organisation’s failure to submit a progress report on time to the federal government regarding a research grant it had been awarded by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). They also called out Daszak for “questionable conduct”: inconsistencies in testimonies previously given and documents submitted to the group running the hearing, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
EcoHealth “potentially misled the federal government on multiple occasions” in terms of being transparent and adhering to reporting requirements as a recipient of federal funding, said Raul Ruiz, a Democratic representative from California and the ranking member of the subcommittee.
At the start of the hearing, subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup, a Republican representative from Ohio, announced the findings of a report evaluating EcoHealth’s research activities issued earlier in the day. The interim report, released by the subcommittee’s Republican members, states that EcoHealth failed to disclose high-risk, so-called gain-of-function research that it conducted in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and recommended that the organisation be barred from receiving future federal funds and criminally investigated.
NIH to intensify scrutiny of foreign grant recipients in wake of COVID origins debate
Daszak disputed that the work carried out by EcoHealth and the WIV meets the definition of gain-of-function research. To meet that definition, he said, an experiment would need to have a likelihood of increasing a virus’s transmission or pathogenicity, and that the virus would already have to be known to infect humans. “Because the work we were doing was on bat coronaviruses, it was not covered by those rules,” Daszak said, referring to a definition used by the NIH to evaluate grants involving pathogen research. Wenstrup, who said the researcher had been “less than cooperative”, suggested that Daszak was using semantics to obscure the definition of gain-of-function research, which more generally confers new abilities to pathogens.
The hearing’s intense scrutiny of Daszak and EcoHealth could disincentivize other US scientists from proposing collaborations with colleagues in China and other countries, a process that is considered essential for pandemic prevention and preparedness, says Lawrence Gostin, a health-law and policy specialist at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Researchers need to be able to study new viruses in the locations where they are emerging. “It is extraordinarily important for Western-based scientists in the United States, the UK and other places to have strong working relationships with scientists around the world, including in China,” he says.
Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, says she was disappointed that the Democrats joined the Republicans in what she says was “essentially an attack on science”. “It’s a very dangerous situation because most scientists who are approaching any problem — whether it’s the origins of the pandemic, whether it’s anything else — are going to think twice: should I actually get involved in research that is high impact but potentially politically controversial?”
A long-standing collaboration
Daszak has been a lightning rod in the COVID-19 origins debate, in which some researchers have argued that the SARS-CoV-2 coronovirus passed to humans naturally, from animals, and others have suggested it could have escaped from the WIV. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, EcoHealth, which aims to identify pathogens that could trigger pandemics and find solutions to them, had been collaborating with researchers in China for more than 15 years, studying coronaviruses in bats.
However, once the COVID-19 pandemic was in full force, in April 2020, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated a grant it had awarded EcoHealth for research in this vein. The WIV was a subawardee on this grant — a partner that was given funds to carry out some of the research proposed by EcoHealth. The termination was announced shortly after then-president Donald Trump, who had been publicly implying that China was to blame for the pandemic, told a reporter at a press conference that the government would stop funding the WIV.
Daszak visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in early 2021 as part of a team assembled by the World Health Organization to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.Credit: Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty
About five months earlier, Daszak and 26 other scientists published a letter in the scientific journal The Lancet1, attempting to dispel rumours about China’s involvement in the pandemic. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” the letter said. Although the letter declared the authors had no competing interests, critics would later point out Daszak’s close ties to scientists in China and suggest that this letter stopped the scientific community from truly considering the lab-leak hypothesis early in the pandemic.
Later that year, his ties to China would once again become an issue when Daszak was selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to be part of an investigative team exploring the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Observers at the time worried that his relationship with Chinese researchers would endanger his ability to impartially conduct the investigation, which took place in early 2021.
At the hearing, Ruiz pressed Daszak about The Lancet letter and why he hadn’t declared competing interests. Daszak said that the letter was attempting to address specific conspiracy theories circulating early in the pandemic, including that SARS-CoV-2 contained snake DNA, rather than trying to cut off any exploration of the lab-leak hypothesis. He also pointed out that competing interests were added to the letter. They indicated that his salary is paid by EcoHealth and that the organisation works with a “range of universities and governmental health and environmental science organisations” in China – without naming the WIV specifically.
Biosafety questions
Another issue raised at the hearing was a grant proposal submitted in 2018 by Daszak and colleagues, including those at the WIV, to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The goal of the project, which DARPA did not ultimately fund, was to ‘defuse’ the threat of bat-borne coronaviruses by engineering the viruses to infect humanised mice and assess their capacity to cause disease. On the basis of a draft of the proposal obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, politicians at the hearing suggested that Daszak attempted to downplay the role that Chinese collaborators would have in the project to increase its chances of being approved. Daszak denied this and said that he contacted DARPA to check that it was okay to include the WIV on the proposal.
“A lot of the discussion about what was written in the marginalia of the early draft of that proposal could probably apply to anybody’s grant proposal for any agency,” Rasmussen says. “That’s the normal process of grant writing. And it’s sort of shocking to me, but also kind of hilarious, that people are reading so much into these notes.”
NIH reinstates grant for controversial coronavirus research
Republican representatives repeatedly questioned Daszak about whether the WIV had the appropriate biosafety levels to conduct the coronavirus research specified in the un-funded 2018 proposal.
Gigi Kwik Gronvall, an immunologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, says that the response to biosafety concerns in other countries shouldn’t be to avoid working with those countries, but to partner with them to provide training and promote better practices. “If we want US science to be the standard-setter for safety, for security, for social responsibility, then we have to be a leader. And that means partnering with countries to help solve their public-health problems.”
Anthony Fauci, who was head of NIAID when EcoHealth received its grant to study bat coronaviruses with the WIV in 2014, will testify before the subcommittee on 3 June.
Indiegogo-backed Ceretone is yet another hearing aid company aimed at people looking for a low-cost, low-complexity way to give their hearing a boost. At $349 for a pair—or $229 for a single ear’s aid—the tiny hearing aids are designed to have only a modest impact on hearing. Fortunately, they also make an equally modest impact on the wallet.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Core One is how small the hearing aids are. I weighed them at 0.96 grams each (with a small ear tip), which makes them perhaps the smallest aids I’ve tested to date—just a hair lighter than the Sony CRE-C10. The glossy white aids slip entirely into the ear canal, with only the recovery thread sticking out a few millimeters for retrieval. Unless you closely examine your ears, they are functionally invisible.
Out of the ear, they’re not so unobtrusive. Color-coded, cone-shaped ear tips (one blue, one red) provide a somewhat garish indication of which aid goes where. Only six ear tips, a pair of each in three sizes, are included in the box—although Ceretone also sent some clear tips on the side which I found a bit more comfortable. All of Ceretone’s ear tips are considered “closed” domes, which created a moderately distorted, echolike effect in my testing. At the very least, a broader selection of ear tips, including open domes that are more appropriate for users with mild hearing loss, would help to improve audio fidelity.
Photograph: Ceretone
Echo aside, I found the Core One experience to be initially a little rocky, primarily owing to significant, screeching feedback whenever I touched the aids or the recovery thread in the slightest. While the amplification impact was readily apparent, the aids were hampered by this high-pitched interference. This was further exacerbated by problems getting the aids seated in my ears properly. It may not look like it at first, but there is a “right side up” to these aids, as the recovery thread is meant to angle downward out of the ear canal. I found this surprisingly hard to achieve owing in part to the small size of the aids, which resulted in me constantly having to fiddle with them.
The Core One hearing aids are not tuned to your audiogram, nor are any frequency equalization options available. Like many low-cost hearing aids, the volume boost is across the board, providing a steady but blunt amplification to all sounds in the spectrum. You’ll need the mobile app to control the aids, as there are no onboard hardware controls available (and no way to reach them anyway).
Even these controls are on the blunt side: Six volume settings and two program modes (standard and restaurant) are available in the app—and each has to be set individually for each aid. Bizarrely, there’s no indication of what the active volume or program setting is in the app. Instead, you have to tap a control button (say, “Volume up”) and listen for beeps to guess whether the audio is loud enough; three beeps mean you are either at minimum or maximum volume. The same goes for the program mode: One beep means you’re in standard mode, and two beeps mean you’re in restaurant mode. Again, visual cues that indicate the live status of these settings seem like a bare minimum to ask for, even in a budget hearing aid product.
Hearing aids: Not only for the near-deaf? We’ve already seen one product in the emerging category of hearing aids designed for users with relatively mild hearing loss—the Olive Union Olive Max. Now there’s Elehear’s Alpha Pro, another affordable over-the-counter product that aims to acclimate users to what hearing aids can do … before things reach crisis mode.
Elehear’s Alpha Pro doesn’t break any new ground in the design department, offering a traditional behind-the-ear design with a receiver connected to the primary device via a thin wire—perhaps just a bit longer than most. The units are available only in a dark gray color, which I find more aesthetically pleasing and unobtrusive than the more common silver or beige (yech).
Photograph: Elehear
The units arrive unconfigured, but new users get a free 30-minute online session with an audiologist if they need help setting things up and getting the lay of the land. If you’re a first-time hearing aid user, this is a good idea, as the audiologist can guide you through which settings and eartips are likely to work best for you, not to mention provide general usage and cleaning tips. The audiologist (there’s just one at Elehear) can also help later, on an ad hoc basis, via phone and email.
The Alpha Pro’s hardware controls are simple, with an individual volume rocker on the back of each unit. They will work out of the box, without Elehear’s app, but you’ll need to delve into said app if you want to get the most out of the hearing aids. While the app is simple on the surface, there’s a lot more to it underneath. Naturally, individual volume controls dominate the main screen, with selections for controlling the amount of ambient noise reduction plus the ability to opt between a forward-facing speech focus or a 360-degree listening mode. I also found the Mute button here handy, which cuts out all amplification and lets you work in silence should you need some peace and quiet.
The Adjust tab lets you drill down further, where you’ll find four presets that correspond to various levels of hearing loss, from Mild to Moderate II. Elehear’s audiologist told me these are all tuned based on common hearing loss patterns—boosting high-level frequencies more than lower ones—but you can tweak them further by tapping the Edit icon, which opens a rudimentary equalizer where you can set levels for Ocean Wave, World Sound, and Birds Chirping (i.e. lows, mids, and highs). All of the settings on this screen can be made globally or per-ear. There are also four environmental modes—General, Restaurant, Outdoor, and TV—which are fairly self-explanatory. Elehear says the only real difference among them is the amount of noise reduction along with the use of the directional focus mode.
You don’t have to be nearly deaf to use a hearing aid. Many doctors urge patients to get started with the devices early, before hearing loss becomes critical. Olive Union’s Olive Max is the first hearing aid I’ve encountered designed for this specific purpose, built for users with “mild to moderate” hearing loss, which the company defines as 26 to 55 decibels of loss. That’s right in line with my diagnosis, so I figured I’d be a perfect candidate for these new devices.
Out of the box, you’re likely to say what I—and everyone I’ve been around—immediately said when I first laid eyes on the Olive Max: They sure are big. Like, really big. Each looks like a Bluetooth headset from the early 2000s, except you have to wear two. At least the units, in a two-tone white and gray design, look sporty, including a wrap-around ear hook that helps keep them in place. They also carry an IPX7 water-resistance rating. But at more than 12 grams each, they’re a solid four or five times the weight of a typical over-the-counter hearing aid. A total of eight different ear tips, in three different styles, are included in the kit to ensure you get a good fit.
Photograph: Olive Union
As hearing aids, the Olive Max units work roughly as advertised, and casual users can pop them out of the box and into their ears to get started with minimal fuss, though getting them hooked over your ear properly can be tricky, especially if you wear glasses. Controls on the back of each aid handle volume (independently for each ear) and let you select one of four environmental modes (TV, Meeting Room, Outdoor, or Restaurant). You can also use the buttons to toggle “Hear-Thru mode,” which lets you turn off environmental audio processing altogether if you simply want to use the Olive Max as Bluetooth earbuds.
You can fine-tune your listening experience in the My Olive app—though, bizarrely, the hearing aid manual does not mention that an app exists, or even that you can use the hearing aids as Bluetooth earbuds. (You want the My Olive app (Android, iOS), not the incompatible Olive Smart Ear app.) The app allows you to make the same adjustments as the physical controls, but it also offers a noise-reduction and feedback-cancellation feature (pro tip: max out both of these), and it includes a more detailed graphic equalizer that lets you fine-tune frequency response further.
You can’t test your hearing directly within the app, although a short questionnaire will hook you up with various “AI-recommended presets” based on your age and a few other basic inputs. If you want anything more refined, you’ll need to delve into the equalizer by hand, but this is mostly a trial-and-error situation. It’s also worth noting that the My Olive app includes an audio therapy system designed to help people with tinnitus. I don’t suffer from tinnitus so I wasn’t qualified to test this feature.
What the Atom One does do is make things louder—and by default, it makes all the things louder. Tuning is fairly blunt: A lone button on the back of each aid lets you cycle through five volume levels. Since the aids don’t talk to one another, each has to be controlled individually. The units also include three environmental modes that are designed respectively for conversation, noisy environments, and in-vehicle operation. To cycle through these—again, separately for each ear—you hold down the button on the back of each unit for a few seconds and wait for a lower frequency tone to alert you to which mode it has engaged.
If you’re prone to fiddling with hearing aids, you’ll probably accidentally hit the control button more than you’d like, inadvertently changing the volume and requiring you to cycle back through the five levels again to return to the volume you want. This is a bit of a pain, but a little hassle is perhaps to be expected at this price level.
As for performance, the amplification effect is, to put things plainly, rather blunt. Around the house, when at max volume, it sounded like everyone was screaming, and even the slightest sound was deafening. Typing this review with the aids in was nerve-racking, even at more moderate volumes, like tiny firecrackers popping beneath my fingers. My voice became an echoing boom from the heavens that drowned out everything else.
Eventually, I found better luck in more intimate environments at lower volume settings and was able to see some value in hearing television audio and one-on-one conversations with a modest amount of added clarity—but in busy, noisy environments, the Atom One couldn’t keep up. In a bowling alley test, the aids were effectively useless no matter how I configured them.
Ugly Hiss
In all mode settings and at all volumes, there’s ample background hiss that makes it feel a bit like you’re sitting on an airplane. I found it more difficult to concentrate with them in my ears even if I was in a silent room. Combined with the booming reports of keyboard taps, footsteps, and crinkling wrappers, I found the Atom One to be significantly more nerve-racking than I’d like. (Which is none at all.)
On aesthetics, I wouldn’t call the Atom One ugly—the mostly in-ear design is at least less obtrusive than behind-the-ear models—but the beige color palate doesn’t feel very modern. Perhaps this is something Walmart requested, but a more modern white or black earbud-like design would probably go over better with most wearers.
Brad Wenstrup (right), a Republican from Ohio who chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, speaks with Raul Ruiz (left), a Democrat from California who is ranking member of the subcommittee.Credit: Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty
During a public hearing in Washington DC today, Republicans in the US House of Representatives alleged that government scientists unduly influenced the editors of scientific journals and that, in turn, those publications stifled discourse about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats clapped back, lambasting their Republican colleagues for making such accusations without adequate evidence and for sowing distrust of science.
US congressional hearing produces heat but no light on COVID-origins debate
The session is the latest in a series of hearings held by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic to explore where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus came from, despite a lack of any new scientific evidence. Scientists have for some time been arguing over whether the virus spread naturally, from animals to people, or whether it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Some have alleged that in the early days of the pandemic, government scientists Anthony Fauci, former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Francis Collins, former director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), steered the scientific community, including journals, to dismiss the lab-leak hypothesis.
During the pandemic, “rather than journals being a wealth of information”, they instead “put a chilling effect on scientific research regarding the origins of COVID-19”, Brad Wenstrup, a Republican representative from Ohio who is chair of the subcommittee, said at the hearing. Raul Ruiz, a Democratic representative from California who is the ranking member of the subcommittee, shot back: “Congress should not be meddling in the peer-review process, and it should not be holding hearings to throw around baseless accusations.”
Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals in Washington DC, appeared before the committee to deny the suggestion that he had been coerced or censored by government scientists.
The subcommittee also invited Magdalena Skipper, Nature’s editor-in-chief, and Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the medical journal The Lancet, to appear, but neither was present. Skipper was absent owing to scheduling conflicts, but a spokesperson for Springer Nature says the company is “committed to remaining engaged with the Subcommittee and to assisting in its inquiry”. (Nature’s news team is editorially independent of its journals team and of its publisher, Springer Nature.) The Lancet did not respond to requests for comment.
Academic influence?
This is not the first time that Republicans have accused members of the scientific community of colluding with Fauci and Collins. Evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen and virologist Robert Garry appeared before the same subcommittee on 11 July last year to deny allegations that the officials prompted them to publish a commentary in Nature Medicine1 in March 2020 concluding that SARS-CoV-2 showed no signs of genetic engineering. They wrote in the journal that they did not “believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible” for the virus’s origins.
Holden Thorp became editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals in 2019.Credit: Steve Exum
Some lab-leak proponents have suggested, without evidence, that the pandemic began because the NIH funded risky coronavirus research at a lab in Wuhan, offering a motive for Collins and Fauci to promote a natural origin for COVID-19.
During the latest hearing, Republicans went a step further to suggest that not only did Collins and Fauci influence prominent biologists, but that they also encouraged journals to publish research supporting the natural-origin hypothesis. This accusation is based on e-mails that Wenstrup says the subcommittee obtained showing communication between top journal editors and government scientists. Thorp forcefully denied this line of questioning. “No government officials prompted or participated in the review or editing” of two key papers2,3 on COVID-19’s origins published in Science, he testified. “Any papers supporting the lab-origin theory would go through the very same processes” of peer review as any other paper, he said.
Thorp otherwise spent much of the 80-minute hearing answering questions about how a scientific manuscript is prepared for publication, what a preprint is and how peer review works. In a tense moment, Wenstrup questioned a social-media post on Thorp’s personal X (formerly Twitter) page, in which he downplayed the lab-leak hypothesis. Thorp called the post “flippant” and apologised.
Communication queries
Correspondence between journal editors and government scientists is to be expected, Deborah Ross, a Democratic representative from North Carolina, said at the hearing. “Government actors querying academia on issues that are academic in nature isn’t malpractice or unlawful — it’s just doing their jobs.”
Anita Desikan, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists who is based in Washington DC and focuses on scientific integrity, tells Nature’s news team that it is customary for government agencies to reach out to stakeholders to inform policy decisions. Even if a government scientist suggests an idea for a journal paper, “that doesn’t mean it will be published or receive praise from the scientific community”.
Roger Pielke Jr, a science-policy researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was originally slated to testify before the subcommittee until his invitation was rescinded owing to logistical reasons, disagrees. He thinks that Fauci and Collins still shaped the Nature Medicine COVID-19 origins paper by recommending that specific scientists investigate and by offering advice along the way. Nevertheless, the hearing was a “dud”, Pielke Jr says, because Thorp was the wrong witness. Instead, a more relevant witness would have been a government scientific-integrity officer who is more knowledgeable about what constitutes an ethical breach, he adds.
I’ve been coveringhearing aids for WIRED for nearly three years now, and I regularly talk to users and prospects about them when I wear them in public. Regardless of what I’m testing, one brand name has consistently and repeatedly popped up during that time: Jabra.
The Danish brand has a long history making a variety of audio gear, but I’ve always associated it mostly with the Bluetooth headset craze of the aughts. The brand made an early entrance into the over-the-counter hearing aid market (via an acquisition), and it hasn’t let up since, releasing new OTC models at a steady clip.
The latest of these is the Jabra Enhance Select 300, the brand’s smallest and most advanced model yet. You wouldn’t really know it just from the look of the aids. These are fairly standard behind-the-ear models that, while quite small (2.64 grams each), don’t offer any obvious surprises. The demure gray chassis sits close to the back of the ear and snakes a silver cable to the ear canal. Each aid carries a single button on its reverse.
Photograph: Jabra Enhance
Jabra front-loads a lot of the purchase process to ensure your aids arrive preconfigured. You can take an online hearing test or, as I did, upload a professional audiogram; either option allows Jabra’s audiologists to tune the product appropriately before it is shipped. The company also asks you to take a lengthy medical questionnaire to rule out any hearing-related medical problems before sending out the product. Eventually, the digital chatter can get a little tiresome: During the shopping process, Jabra even asks about your credit rating and suggests a monthly payment plan for its lowest-priced product if you say your credit is trash. Once you do place an order, Jabra barrages you with introductory emails and invites you to schedule an orientation with an audiologist to walk you through the hardware and the app. Admittedly, some of this is helpful—especially the Zoom orientation—but Jabra could stand to pump the breaks on the auto-mailer a bit.
There’s plenty to explore once your hearing aids arrive. For example, if you aren’t sure which type of ear tips are best for you, you’ll have ample room to experiment, because the company sends seven different baggies of them to try out, including open, closed, and tulip-style tips in a multitude of sizes. I counted 70 different tips in total, and I have no doubt that Jabra would happily send more if I asked.
With tips installed (I usually test with open tips), I found that getting the aids situated on my ears was made a bit easier thanks to a pinging sound that plays—Jabra calls it Smart Start—while you are guiding the receivers into your ear canal. Controls are as basic as they come: the button on the right aid turns the volume up for both aids, the one on the left turns volume down, and either one cycles through the programs—four in total—if you hold it down for a couple of seconds.
Naturally you’ll get a lot more out of the hearing aids if you connect your set to a mobile app, and Jabra actually has two apps to choose from. The Enhance Pro app comes up first in the app store, but the Enhance Select app is newer. They work about the same way, but since the Enhance Select is more recent I’ll write mostly about it. Primarily you’ll use the app to move among the four modes—All Around, Restaurant, Music, and Outdoor—all of which are self-explanatory. Each mode has extra options associated with it; for most you can select between “noise filter” to mute ambient sounds or “speech clarity” to boost conversational volume. These can be further customized thanks to three equalizer sliders corresponding to bass, middle, and treble frequencies. Volume can be set globally or individually per ear in the app as well. Of special note: Any customizations you make to programs aside from the All Around mode are reset to defaults once the hearing aids are put back into the charging case.
AirPods can work surprisingly well as hearing aids. Thanks to Transparency mode, AirPods Pro will boost the sound of your environment around you. They can give you freaky Spiderman super-hearing if you boost input volume to the max. And Conversation Boost on the latest AirPods Pro 2 can intelligently raise the volume of people talking to you (while lowering the volume of your music or podcasts).
My prescription hearing aids were out of action recently due to a battery problem, so for a few weeks, I used my AirPods Pro as hearing aids.
For the most part, they’ve been pretty good. They work best when set up properly, which is a bit of a chore, but here’s how to do it.
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How to use AirPods as hearing aids
If you experience mild to moderate hearing loss, you can use AirPods Pro as great part-time hearing aids, boosting sound in noisy environments. They also work well as a substitute when you forget your regular hearing aids (or their batteries run out of charge).
Apple’s noise-canceling earbuds also can serve as a great starter device. Most prescription hearing aids cost between $3,000 and $10,000, and require professional hearing tests, fitting and adjustment. Before diving in, you might want to experiment with boosting your hearing with a pair of AirPods Pro.
There’s also no social stigma against wearing AirPods as there is with wearing hearing aids. No one will know you’re using them to augment your hearing — although you might appear rude at first keeping them in while you talk.
They can give you superhuman hearing capable of picking up whispered conversations across the room, too. Just boost the input volume to the maximum. Note: Be very careful listening to anything at high volumes; even just a few minutes at a loud volume can damage your ears even further.
The latest model AirPods Pro 2 are among the best wireless earbuds you can buy for your iPhone and other Apple gear. They offer excellent sound quality, battery life and active noise cancellation, among other advanced features.
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03/13/2024 02:09 pm GMT
Researchers say AirPods are already as good as hearing aids
Professional hearing aids are super-expensive, but researchers found that AirPods already work nearly as well as most hearing aids. In 2020, scientists pitted a pair of AirPods 2 and first-gen AirPods Pro against a basic hearing aid and a premium pair. In almost all the tests, they found the AirPods Pro were as good as the basic hearing aid and only slightly less effective than the premium pair. Even the AirPods 2 “helped participants hear more clearly compared with wearing no hearing aids,” the study found.
Apple doesn’t yet have approval from the Food and Drug Administration to sell AirPods as OTC hearing aids and hasn’t made any announcements about this possibility, but it’s rumored to come soon. The company has been adding a lot of features to AirPods Pro that make them suitable — including Conversation Boost, muting background sounds, and particularly Transparency Mode, which makes all this possible.
AirPods Pro work great as part-time or starter hearing aids, but they’re not a full-time replacement yet.
Apple’s earbuds still don’t work as well as my Oticon More hearing aids: The battery life is much shorter (AirPods Pro get about five to six hours versus 18 to 24 hours for the Oticons), and they aren’t as good at boosting voices.
I’ve been using Apple’s latest AirPods Pro (second generation), which Apple launched in September 2022, as substitute hearing aids.
I was in this boat myself. I had trouble hearing people speak in loud environments, but I had no idea of the extent of my deafness until I got fitted with hearing aids. When I first tried them on, I was astounded and almost choked up. Suddenly, I could hear the leaves rustling in the trees and sand crunching underfoot as people passed by: sounds I was oblivious to beforehand. It’s been an amazing experience getting my hearing back.
If you own AirPods Pro, perhaps you should try setting them up as hearing aids to see if they make any difference. If so, you can then explore getting prescription hearing devices.
Start with an audiogram
This is my audiogram after taking a professional hearing test. It shows moderate hearing loss in higher frequencies. The test tones had to be played louder in order for me to hear them. (Ignore the coffee stains!)
Before setting up AirPods as hearing aids, I highly recommend getting an audiogram, a chart that shows the results of a hearing test. It shows how loud sounds need to be for you to hear them at different frequencies — low-pitched through high-pitched. As you can see in the audiogram above, I have moderate hearing loss in higher frequencies: The test tones had to be played at much higher decibels in order for me to hear them.
If you import an audiogram, your AirPods will create an individualized sound profile for you, boosting the frequencies you have trouble hearing. It makes a huge difference.
If you’ve taken a professional hearing test, you’ll likely have been given an audiogram — usually, it’s just a printout. Simply take a picture of your audiogram with your iPhone and it’ll be ready to import.
Luckily, you don’t have to take a professional hearing test: Some free apps will create very accurate audiograms for you. (Jump to the section below detailing how to get a free audiogram using an app.)
However, you don’t need an audiogram to use AirPods as hearing aids. There’s a built-in hearing test during the setup process that gets pretty close.
AirPods as hearing aids: Step-by-step setup instructions
Here are the steps to transform AirPods into assistive hearing devices.
7. After taking the test, choose Custom Settings.
8. If you have an audiogram already saved, choose it when customizing Headphone audio.
Here’s what the whole process looks like with screenshots:
1. Open Settings on your iPhone or iPad, then Accessibility, then AirPods
Start in the Settings app, then tap Accessibility. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
First, connect your AirPods to your iPhone. (This works the same way on an iPad.) Then open the Settings app on your iPhone, then tap Accessibility. Scroll down to AirPods and tap that to select the AirPods you want to customize.
2. Scroll down to Audio Accessibility Settings
Choose the AirPods you want to set up. Make sure they are connected, or you might get an error. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Make sure you are wearing your AirPods, then tap on them if your device says they are Connected. On the next screen, scroll down to Audio Accessibility Settings.
3. Tap Headphone Accommodations, then Custom Audio Setup
Under Headphone Accommodations, you will find the Custom Audio Setup section. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
At the top of the screen, tap Headphone Accommodations, then tap Custom Audio Setup. The next screen asks you to add your audiogram.
4. Import your audiogram
To add an audiogram, just take a picture of it. The camera automatically reads the numbers in the chart. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
If you have an audiogram printout, hit Continue in the setup wizard. If doing this for the first time, you’ll first be asked to add your audiogram. Choose Add Audiogram, then import the chart using the iPhone’s Camera, Photos or Files app. I used my iPhone’s camera to take a picture of the audiogram I got from a professional hearing test, and the camera imported the results automatically.
After importing, if there’s any data missing, you’ll be asked to fill in any missing numbers.
5. Customize your AirPods Pro’s Transparency Mode
If any of the audiogram data turns up missing during import, you’ll be asked to fill it in. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
After hitting Save, you can adjust amplification (basically the volume level of the AirPods you’ll be using as hearing aids), left and right balance, and tone. You can turn on Ambient Noise Reduction and Conversation Boost, both of which should make it easier to hear people in face-to-face conversations. I recommend turning on both of these, and went with the default amplification. (I crank it up for Spiderman-like super-hearing as needed.)
Hit Done.
6. If you don’t have an audiogram, take the built-in hearing test (or use a free app)
Apple’s hearing test asks you to rate samples of speech and music. It’s basic, but good for a start. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
If you don’t have an audiogram, you can take Apple’s built-in hearing test to generate one. First, make sure you’re in a quiet environment. The test asks you to compare samples of music and voices, asking which sounds better — version 1 or version 2. If they sound about the same, choose the first one. The test takes just a couple of minutes.
Alternatively, you can use one of the free apps mentioned below to generate an audiogram.
7. After taking the hearing test, make sure to choose Custom Settings
Choose Custom Settings. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
At the end of the built-in hearing test, make sure to choose Custom Settings.
8. If you have an audiogram already saved, choose it when customizing Headphone audio
If you already have an audiogram saved in the Health app, it’ll appear here. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
You may already have an audiogram saved in the Health app. If so, it’ll appear on the first screen after hitting Custom Audio setup in step 3 above.
Choose the latest audiogram, and hit Use Audiogram. You’ll then be able to customize settings, as in Step 6 above.
How to get an audiogram using a free app
The free Mimi hearing test app can create an audiogram to be imported into the Health app. Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
If you don’t have an audiogram, you can use the Mimi Hearing Test or SonicCloud Personalized Sound apps. After taking the free hearing test, simply import the results into the Health app.
Both these apps mimic a professional hearing test. You listen to a range of tones at various frequencies and volumes, and the app creates an audiogram based on your responses.
I tried both apps and got basically the same results as the professional audiogram, which makes me confident they are both pretty accurate. However, the numbers from both apps were slightly off. (That could indicate my hearing deteriorated since my last professional hearing test.)
Obviously, if you want the greatest accuracy, head to your doctor or hearing specialist.
After taking the hearing test in either app, you’ll be asked to connect to Apple Health. Since this is private health information, you must permit the third-party apps to connect with the Health app. Hit Give Permission.
Your audiogram will be imported and will show up in the custom audio process.
Which AirPods offer Transparency Mode?
Using AirPods as hearing aids relies on Transparency Mode, which lets in outside sounds so you can hear what’s happening around you. Transparency Mode is often used when listening to music, but if you use your AirPods in Transparency Mode without any media playing, they act as hearing aids.
Transparency Mode is available on the following AirPods and Beats earbuds:
The latest model AirPods Pro 2 are among the best wireless earbuds you can buy for your iPhone and other Apple gear. They offer excellent sound quality, battery life and active noise cancellation, among other advanced features.
