AH Augmented Hearing Open-source hearing enhancement

All your audio customised to your hearing profile.

Modern audio engineering for hearing health.

Augmented Hearing is an open source solution that brings real-time loudness balancing, hearing-profile personalization, and clearer speech to everyday listening. We are building both a software-first and a hardware alternative to an expensive, outdated hearing technology market.

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  • 1.5B+ people worldwide experience some degree of hearing loss
  • $3k-$16k typical price range for a pair of hearing aids
  • 1B+ Windows devices are the first large software distribution target

The problem

Typical hearing aids are expensive and lag decades behind modern audio.

Traditional hearing technology

  • The cost is prohibitive and unjustified
  • The sound processing and customization is rudimentary and antiquated
  • They often expose users to harmful sound levels and feedback
  • Often depend on difficult to handle batteries

The hearing technology market

  • Worth an estimated $9.8 billion
  • 5 hearing aid manufacturers hold 99% of the global market share
  • Leading manufacturers show reluctance to improvement, even in straightforward areas
  • Some open source efforts exist and have made progress, but require specialized knowledge to use

The project began with Eva's 102-year-old grandfather and his expensive hearing aids, which he can’t operate himself. The feedback screeches unbearable noise into his ears, and the only way to turn them off and on is to take out the batteries.. And the batteries don’t last long.

So we gave him an old field recorder microphone with wired earbuds, a piece of professional audio equipment which costs under €100. We turned on dynamic range compression and volume limiting. His hearing improved immediately, and most of the time the setup can be turned on with a flick of a switch. Even these basic DSP effects improved upon the medical state of the art. We realised how badly the hearing technology space needs reform, and that modern audio knowledge has long outpaced it.

EVER SINCE, WE HAVE MET HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE WITH HEARING LOSS, AND THEY ARE ALL UNHAPPY WITH THEIR HEARING AIDS.

Next steps on the roadmap: an easy hearing test and a little sound engineer living inside your computer who knows your personal hearing profile.

01

Browser extension

Demonstrate the audio improvements in a lightweight Firefox extension.

02

Self-administered hearing test

Allow users to assess their hearing profile through an easy-to-use, self-administered test, and convert the result into EQ settings.

03

System-wide PC middleware

Balancing volume levels and correcting for your hearing profile system-wide, starting with 1 billion Windows devices worldwide.

04

Hearing-aid replacement

Start making modern, user-friendly, affordable hearing aids. We have a manufacturing pipeline lined up, and are working on benchmarking hardware requirements.

Team

Co-founder

Brett Alexander Preston

Audio software engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer whose work in DSP, accessibility, privacy-preserving audio, and immersive sound underpins the technical direction of the project.

Portfolio Music Rustic Audio

Co-founder

Dr Eva Infeld

Mathematician, coder, and researcher with a long track record in free and open-source software, cryptographic tools, security research, and coordinating successful grant-funded technical projects.

Personal Website Katzenpost

Help us revolutionize hearing health technology

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