The future of high-quality audio lies in personalization, driven by innovative hearing-assistive technologies such as those found in the newly released Apple AirPods Pro, according to Shehab Albahri, Vice President of Research and Development at Knowles Corporation
Speaking at the Audiocollab 2024 conference in London earlier this month, Albahri said we often associate hearing loss with old age, but the problem is more common and affects more people than expected.
Hearing loss is a condition that usually necessitates multiple visits to an audiologist and the purchase of expensive hearing aids. While this scenario is true for individuals with severe hearing loss, the reality is that hearing loss is far more prevalent than most people realise and is significantly underdiagnosed in the general population.
An estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide experience some form of hearing loss, with 1.1 billion suffering from mild hearing loss – defined as a 25-decibel reduction in hearing sensitivity. This mild loss often manifests as difficulty understanding conversations in noisy or crowded environments.
It’s this mild hearing loss that Apple has identified as a significant opportunity, which is why it introduced hearing assistance features in the new AirPods Pro, announced during the September 2024 product release event.
The new AirPods will include the ability to perform on-device hearing tests and automatically adjust the volume of external sounds to better suit the user’s hearing needs. The hearing aid market worldwide is worth $1.1 billion.
Albahri believes that this development will significantly increase the adoption of assistive hearing technology, citing two major barriers: limited awareness of hearing loss and the stigma associated with wearing hearing aids.
However, this technology won’t be a silver bullet.
Successful hearing assistants require more than just appropriate amplification. “They must also be comfortable for extended use and offer long-lasting battery life to support full-day wear,” says Albahri.
Knowles Corporation has a long history of operating at the intersection of hearing health and consumer electronics. Its next phase of research is focused on advancing innovation, particularly in creating the ideal audio experience for each individual.
Working under the hypothesis that every person has a unique hearing profile, Knowles is exploring the idea that optimal audio experiences are not one-size-fits-all. Instead, audio quality should be personalised, taking individual factors such as hearing loss into account.
The company has developed the “Knowles Curve,” a graph that determines the optimal amplification levels for each individual. The goal is to ensure that personalised hearing preferences can seamlessly carry over between devices, platforms, and media providers, so users receive the best possible audio experience, no matter how or where they consume content.
Audio Collaborative is an annual audio industry conference in London facilitated by Futuresource Consulting that brings together industry experts to analyse trends and market insights from across audio.
Related report: Consumer Audio gathering momentum as people search for better sound: $4 billion increase predicted