At this week’s CES in Las Vegas, Bragi, a leading manufacturer of wireless earbuds, unveiled an expansion of their partnership with Mimi Hearing Technologies that plans to take their products into a new, health-oriented direction.
According to sources, this new personal sound amplification product will continue to offer end-users hearing enhancement, but with an added feature. The twist is the new model of their earbud will include a feature that offers relief from tinnitus.
Bragi’s plan is to combine its consumer audio technology with Mimi’s customized hearing test maps, resulting in user-specific sound profiles and creating a refined solution for health issues like tinnitus. Combined with Mimi’s personalization technology, this new hearing device will automatically configure and program itself to the end-user without any need for manual programming or a smartphone.
Part of this collaboration between Mimi Hearing Technologies and Bragi involves Project Ears, an initiative created by Bragi in 2015. Project Ears has already created a hearing test to create unique “Earprint.” According to Bragi, Project Ears will also test out personalized hearing enhancement in homes, offices and outside work environments like construction sites.
Consumer Audio Eyes Low-Cost Solutions to Hearing Loss & Tinnitus
Given the recent Congressional bill to create a category of direct to consumer hearing devices, Project Ears is an example of consumer electronic companies looking for ways to provide lower cost, less medically-oriented solutions to help people with hearing loss and tinnitus.
Bragi is not the only company interested in bringing direct to consumer amplification and tinnitus relief products to market. Other examples of direct to consumer amplification products include the BeHear from Alango Technology, Apple’s Airpods and the Fennex app.
Source: Bragi
Sounds interesting ! We need some hands on technical information.This sounds like the same hearing aids an tinnitus management but with the use of wireless connectivity that may be counter productive in the long run.
That’s what we need: enough hands on research to observe, document and analyse the long term effects of adding amplification to the pathological ear. Without this, the project may well be futile if the negative consequences and unknown. So, its a good start but lets be cautious about the after effects like auditory sensitivity loss that occurs with over amplification. Verification is very important !