Sound Check

Yesterday, Adam Savage posted a video to YouTube describing his experiences using the AirPods Pro as replacements for the traditional hearing aids that he’s used for years. It’s a good video, matter-of-factly going over his history of hearing loss, the expensive hearing aids he used when he was on television regularly, and the cheaper ones he currently uses from Costco. (I never in a million years would’ve thought to check Costco for them). Not to spoil the video, but his verdict is that the AirPods are the first OTC ones he’s used that he actually likes.

It reminded me to try the hearing test included on the iPhone as of a recent update to iOS and the AirPods Pro firmware. I’d last tried it a couple of months ago, but I’d get 1/3 to halfway through the test before it errored out. Where I live in LA, we tend to have helicopters flying overhead, or low-T dipshits recklessly drag racing out on the street, so we’re never guaranteed more than 10 minutes of uninterrupted silence. My latest test, however, completed successfully.

I’ve known for a while that I’ve got some degree of hearing loss. I’m having more and more difficulty hearing movies and TV shows, but I just blamed that on a combination of middle age and audio engineering in a post-Christopher Nolan world. More concerning is the number of sounds that I just can’t hear at all. My husband often hears our front gate opening when I don’t hear anything. There’s a set of lockers at my office that have digital keypads that beep on lock or unlock, but I was completely unaware that they beep until a coworker told me. None of it has seemed essential, but enough to be reminded that I haven’t been hearing everything.

The iPhone’s hearing test involves tapping on the phone whenever you hear it play a sequence of three beeps, which vary in frequency and volume. For a lot of the test, I felt as if I was having to skip so many of them that it would just end abruptly and flash a dire warning that I needed to see a hearing specialist immediately. As it turned out, though, it simply ended with a notice that I had mild hearing loss in one ear, and moderate in the other. Not very surprising.

It then offered to have the AirPods Pro correct for my affected hearing, which was as simple as reading some warning messages and then pressing a button. I’ve been wearing them around the house last night and a few hours today.

The effect was initially jarring. Because Disney Parks are my frame of reference for literally everything, I immediately was reminded of Sounds Dangerous, a show at Disney/MGM Studios where guests would be brought onstage to add sound effects to a movie clip playing behind them. Everything I did sounded as if it were being given over-loud sfx from a clumsy and amateurish foley artist. My footsteps were cartoonishly loud and sharp, opening and closing drawers sounded like I was throwing a tantrum. Even sliding into bed sounded like sandpaper against satin, punctuated with a sound like a zip cord-powered toy car as I put my legs under the sheets. And getting out of bed sounded like someone twisting a bundle of celery.

All of that is likely to fade into normalcy the longer I wear them. And everything else is markedly better. In particular, the “light rain” noise machine that we’ve been using at night actually sounds like light rain again, after a year or so of it getting quieter and quieter until I started to wonder what was the point of using it at all. And I can now make out voices on TV more clearly, with the volume set to 8 or 9 less Volume Units than I’d had to set it before. (Normally I have to set it to 24 to hear it comfortably, but now I can hear it at 16 or 17. Am I the only one who wishes there were consistent units for TV volume across all TV and audio setups?)

These still have the limitations of being AirPods, which make me reluctant to wear them all day. My own voice sounds disturbingly tinny and electronic. My chewing or swallowing noises are unbearable. And there is an occasional very-high-register snapping sound that seems to be a side effect of the signal processing.

But as a feature included with the ear buds I was already using, it’s just an amazing addition from Apple. It’s exciting to think I’ll have it available when I most need it, either when I need to actually hear my coworkers, or when I want to watch TV without having the volume set so high it’s painful for everyone else in the room.

And even better, it’s convinced me that the benefits are enough for me to consider getting tested for a real hearing aid at some point. Even knowing that my hearing was deteriorating, it’s unlikely I would ever have tried to get confirmation and a diagnosis. Apple’s made it easy enough that there was no reason not to.