I didn’t intend to switch hearing aid brands. It happened like this: My GP initially directed me to the NHS audiological department at North Finchley Memorial Hospital, which, as I subsequently discovered, actually outsources to Specsavers. After a month or so with Specsavers, I asked to be transferred to Guy’s Hospital at London Bridge. The Guy’s Dental Unit has been looking after my teeth for over a decade now, and I’ve been very impressed with… Now read on…
My credentials as a full-on audiophile, such as they might have been, were comprehensively blown at the beginning of this year. My audiologist revealed that my hearing starts to fall off at 1kHz and is technically classed as “severe” above around 8kHz. (The full story is here.) The range of human hearing is generally reckoned to be between 20Hz and 20kHz, spanning some seven octaves. Some audiophiles claim that even sounds above 20 kilohertz need… Now read on…
Hearing aids may seem like a specialist subject. But it’s one that perhaps should be engaging all of us. Not just because the world population as a whole is getting deafer younger. As the components and sensors in our phones become smaller and more numerous—and cheaper, many pundits believe these could eventually end up as an integral part of our bodies. Not necessarily surgically implanted—more likely temporarily housed in some body cavity. The ear canal… Now read on…
On December 13th of 2016 Apple broke new ground in audio with the introduction of its wireless AirPods. A pair of Bluetooth earbuds that, uniquely, were not wired together, communicating wirelessly not only with the music source, but also with each other. A radical new idea? Not quite. It’s something standard NHS hearing aids have been doing for over a decade. And in at least one important respect Apple’s new AirPods were a step back… Now read on…
