Was playing with the new AirPod pros and there is a way for it to read an audiogram. Interestingly, Oct 1 hearing aids can be sold over the counter. I tried using it. It can read the audiogram from a picture or a file however the results were not good. It blasted my ears when I turned it on. I would like to see more information on this for those of us who are older, maybe wiser and definitely hard of hearing.
You apparently can but I had difficulty understanding what numbers to add where. This was read from a clean Costco audiogram and I could not find any numbers in the phone that matched the audiogram. Nor the abbreviations. My audiogram was 4 years old so maybe printouts have changed.
About 18 months ago I followed the procedure in the link below to use an app called “Mimi Hearing Test” to create an audiogram right on my iPhone and apply it to the earbuds that I use. My hearing loss is not all profound (yet), but it seemed to make a noticeable difference for me.
I programmed my audiogram in and it has made a big improvement in music listening.
Unfortunately, the hearing loss in my right ear is a good deal worse than the left, and the AirPods, even with the correct numbers in, can’t give enough upper frequency boost for that ear. I tried tweaking the numbers manually for the right ear to try and boost things more, but there was no change; I seemed to hit a ceiling.
So, I’m surmising that the AirPods can help with mild to moderate hearing loss, but don’t have the capability of correcting more severe loss that a dedicated hearing aid can—which is understandable, given they’re a much less expensive consumer device.
Update: After listening to music using my audiogram settings, I decided the music was a little too ‘bright’ (too much 8 kHz). To make this change I had to go through the process of importing the image of my audiogram then editing the numbers it scanned. This time I entered a slightly lower number for 8 kHz. The music now sounds great and my ‘Health’ app shows two slightly different audiograms with different timestamps.
Original post: Here is how I manually entered some of the numbers from my audiogram. (Thanks to @ddmiller for the link). This only works for Apple and Beats headphones/Airpods. Connect your headphones before trying to adjust these settings. Go to Settings → Accessibility → Hearing>Audio/Visual → Headphone Accommodations → Custom Audio Setup. There you will have the option to ‘Use Audiogram’ or ‘Don’t Use Audiogram’. When I chose Use Audiogram it asked me if I wanted to import it from Camera, Photos, or Files. I had taken a photo of my audiogram from my audiologist so I imported it from Photos. My phone scanned the audiogram and told me I needed to fill in some missing data. I looked at my audiogram and entered the missing numbers and corrected those I thought hadn’t scanned quite right. The phone then played a sample of music with two buttons ‘Custom’ and ‘Standard’ so I could toggle back and forth to see the difference. Below that are two buttons, ‘Use Audiogram’ and ‘Use Standard’. I chose Audiogram because I have a substantial high frequency hearing loss and now when I listen to music it sounds MUCH better. Once again, I’m very impressed with Apple’s technology and software.