I was just thinking about this with the announcement of the new AirPods. Apple could really take the concert earplug market while getting great natural marketing (people wearing AirPods at concerts). Just balance and lower the volume for concerts.
Getting tinnitus that was is just a function of how much sound there is in your ears. So headphones with loud rock music can cause issues, headphones on quiet less so and can block external noise, as can a blob of wax or whatever.
You don't really need fancy noise cancelling for tinnitus prevention, just some form of bung in your ear.
My AirPod Pros with transparency mode enabled and set to max volume and treble don’t provide as much gain as my MDHearingAid pair ($400), and the external sound quality isn’t as good.
Apple has a real opportunity here, and they are slow in seizing it. I suspect some kind of an arrangement with the hearing aid manufacturers regarding iPhone-ready hearing aids.
The name of the game here is to allow people to dial in their own preferred level of compression (amplifying soft sounds more than looks sounds) and equalization using their iPhones.
Yes, I’ve done that. I’m hoping that 15.1 next week will make some improvements.
Apple could have such a great product here, if they would just add gain comparable to the currently available hearing assist devices, and then add compression, equalization, and clipping of loud noises.
with a lot of woodworking tools the AirPods pros definitely offer more protection than nothing. Not sure what attenuation they offer, but for the truly damaging higher frequency noise they seem to do a pretty decent job.
I still wear real ear protection, but for the odd cut, or for any other day to day situation with loud noises the AirPods do a good job.
When I'm outside running on sidewalks along city streets, music via AirPods Pro with Noise Cancellation turned on sounds a bit better BUT I prefer to keep this feature turned off in favor of being able to hear ambient cars etc.
I’ve spent hours trying to find a review of transparent mode on AirPods or any other similar transparency modes with regards to reducing wind noise amplification while still allowing sounds of cars etc. through. I’m looking for a good solution to listening to music while riding a bike that’s safe but better sound quality than bone conduction. Sadly I can’t find any objective measurement of these combinations of noise cancellation and pass through. I can’t even find a review that mentions if this is how pass through is meant to work vs just passing along all sounds. If the latter then wind noise pass through sounds like a good way to completely ruin your hearing. I guess these days all we can find is marketing and reviews that amount to puff pieces with rare exceptions.
Would you be willing to give a personal experience? Have you tried transparent mode in windy conditions?
