A new free hearing app called Mobile Ears is designed to help people with mild to moderate hearing loss hear clear speech and sound while watching TV or at meetings and conferences with just their phone and earbuds without need for extra hearing devices or hearing tests, Listen AS announced. Listen AS is an Oslo, Norway-based hearing care company developing new solutions to provide hearing care.

According to the NIDCD, approximately one in three people between the ages of 65 and 74 has hearing loss and nearly half of those older than 75 have difficulty hearing. The implications of untreated hearing loss can affect every aspect of an individual’s life, from their social interactions with family and friends, to their ability to work and have meaningful involvement in their communities, to more serious implications, such as how they communicate with doctors and first responders in the case of an emergency.

According to Listen AS, the app works while online or offline and is designed to provide personalized, clear, and amplified sound for people with hearing loss by combining statistical analysis of hearing threshold data with a tailored, individualized user listening profile. Users can adjust the sound that suits their environment, whether it’s a one-on-one conversation or television viewing, without needing to visit an audiologist or hearing specialist. Mobile Ears reportedly gives people with hearing loss speech clarity, noise cancellation, filtering, and removal of unwanted background noise to ensure users hear clearly. To see how the app works, see this video.

“Our mission is to enable quality hearing under any environment, for everyone,” says Snorre Vevstad, CEO and founder of Listen AS. “With Mobile Ears, we are offering an affordable, fashionable, and easily-accessible solution for anyone who needs some help with better hearing.”

Clear hearing for zero cost

According to Listen AS, Mobile Ears is the result of years of joint research efforts by Listen AS and Norwegian research organization SINTEF to perfect hearing solutions. Listen AS engineers and scientists at the Acoustics Research Center worked together to develop algorithms and solutions to amplify sound to deliver clarity of speech. Speech clarity is at the core of Mobile Ears.

To download Mobile Ears, please visit the iOS app store here.

Using Mobile Ears:
1. Download from the iTunes App Store.
2. Open the app and enter the user’s age and gender, so that the app can customize the experience.
3. Plug in earphones and move the button on the slider to personalize the sound for maximum speech clarity and amplification.

The smartphone can be placed on the table or in front of users. Unlike traditional hearing aid devices, setup and adjustment of sound on Mobile Ears can be done without visiting a specialist. The app also works offline.

Source: Listen AS