An app for hearing better

By Hilbert Haar

Here is a story for people like me whose ability to hear is going down the tubes.

At age 68, my hearing is not what it used to be. Sometimes, my wife has to ask me something three times before I understand what she is saying. That is obviously a source of irritation.

Being a guy, I postponed going for a hearing test like forever. But last week I finally went to this place in Marigot where a very nice lady did the test. It’s computerized and very accurate.

The test showed that my hearing in the higher frequencies – above 1,000 hertz – is bad. The higher the frequency of sound, the less I hear.

Of course, the lady had some sophisticated hearing aids on offer. I tried them and the difference with my natural hearing-abilities was astonishing. I was impressed.

What also impressed me was the price of these little wonders of technology: €1,600 ($1,888 at the current rate of exchange). And that’s for ONE ear. To get two of these thingies, I would have to spend close to $3,800.

I’m not stingy or anything like that, but I started thinking that there ought to be a better, and more affordable, way to solve this problem. I turned to the internet and found cheap hearing aids by the truckload for around ten dollars and up.

My wife started laughing and reminded me that my mother-in-law had found hearing aids in Belgium for just one euro back and that all she got in return was a lot of trouble.

The iconic phrase once spoken by former MP Leroy de Weever came to mind: “Cheap no good, good no cheap.”

Then I brought up the issue with American friends of ours – and that changed everything. They tested an app with me that amplifies sound through the microphone of a smart phone. It worked – kind off – but I was not entirely satisfied with it. So while we were testing, I absentmindedly typed ‘hearing aid’ in the search box of the Apple app store.

And guess what? There are hearing aid apps available in the app store and they cost absolutely nothing.

I downloaded Super Hearing Aid – the first one that popped up. It’s amazing my friends and I recommend it to anyone who is hard of hearing without $3,800 in the bank to buy top notch hearing aids.

There are also other solutions available in the app store, like Petralex but I haven’t tried that one yet.

All this is probably bad news for the hearing aid industry, but the app store makes solutions for hearing issues accessible to anyone who has a smartphone.