because I’m going to talk to you about
hearing today and why we should love it
as much as our vision I have to admit
that I have no strong connection to
sound I am not very very deeply rooted
there when maybe my my Adele quote of
hello can you hear me was the as musical
as I get my brother and sister they were
not really great at playing their
instruments so my parents they spared me
off of teaching an instrument instrument
that wasn’t that bad because I had time
to follow my other passions I really
loved building things experimenting
solving problems and at that I relied
more on my sense of vision and my sense
of touch so still today I really like it
when things are tangible and that’s why
today kind of do draw comparisons
between vision and hearing to make it
more graspable for you so yeah I wasn’t
really that interested in hearing I I
didn’t really care about my hearing I
just used it as a sense so how did I get
into this four years ago I was working
in at Atlantic Labs or Berlin based
company builder and I was with my with
my engineering background and human
centered design background I was looking
for a problem to solve and the human
need to fulfill and around the same time
I was having a repeated conversation
with my father who by the way was born
in Poznan um and it went somewhat like
this this conversation hi dad I think
your hearing is not so great anymore
please have a checked yeah I will do it
next week then when I came back three
months later asking how it was he said
yeah I will do it next week three on
Slater I will do it next week so I
really myself felt how hard it is to get
a loved one to take care of the hearing
and with many startup ideas today
I always think what’s the problem there
solving and why is it important
but with that with hearing one of the
five basic senses I thought this is
really worth pursuing there are 650
million
people worldwide who suffer of hearing
loss and only one out of 40 who could
benefit from a hearing aid has one so
far why is that we see kind of two main
reasons on the one hand Hearing Care is
not very accessible it’s expensive takes
a lot of appointments so people rather
procrastinate and it’s highly
stigmatized
we only know hearing aids from our
grandparents and people trying to hide
these flesh-colored devices and so
that’s why then founded nini which by
the way is also running on Ola cracy
which ever just told you about and um we
started attacking this problem of
accessibility first so we built a
smartphone based hearing test that
people can download and take in the
comfort of their home they don’t have to
make appointments they don’t have to
tell others that they might have hearing
loss I can just secretly do it and so
five hundred thousand people now tested
their hearing with these tests amongst
them my father and as it turned out his
hearing is in an arranged where he could
benefit from a hearing aid but he
doesn’t need to get one yet so of course
this showed up the stigma again so he of
course doesn’t choose to get a hearing
aid yet but rather waits so we were back
to Ground Zero and tackling the stigma
problem to understand the stigma on
hearing loss I think we have to look at
as I told you I will draw another
analogies from vision to make it more
graspable in vision and kind of it’s
like one thing that is tested like how
small can something be that you can
still read it in hearing the same thing
as kind of hearing threshold how quiet
can something be that you can still hear
it so I’m going to play a sound now
which is going from loud to quiet I’m
going to ask you to raise your hand when
you hear the sound and take it down when
you don’t anymore
and then look around the room and see
kind of how the people around you here
the first hands going down I see okay
that is hearing threshold and it’s
method measured in decibel and there are
different levels so there is normal a
normal hearing range required sounds
that you can hear hears a sound example
how somebody hears who has that hearing
range the baby has blue eyes so then the
next level is mild hearing loss the baby
has blue eyes the next level so when it
gets hard and harder to understand very
hard now so if we compare the two vision
it’s kind of losing more and more
details as you see here and in the
clouds like in the one we’re kind of the
contrast is brought up it’s very hard to
see the details in the clouds and this
as stronger this gets the more you lose
but there are other things than just a
threshold that can be broken for example
here another example how many colors do
you see – yeah it’s actually the one
thing is a gradient from dark cobalt
blue to steel blue and in hearing this
is called kind of frequency resolution
how well can you tell two neighboring
frequencies apart and when we lose when
our three kids resolution gets impaired
it’s harder for us to tell the
difference between sounds as here shown
with colors so back to a picture example
oops the colors are not so clear anymore
it’s getting blurry then here we see
clearly a blue red alternating and the
one color stops the other color starts
and when our temporal resolution is
broken kind of this is not a clear
border but it’s blurry in time so when
time it is overlapping
so this is so temporal resolution is our
ability to reconstruct the timing of
signals
if this broken we cannot really place it
in time anymore if I move this to vision
in series you see this pictures a little
bit pixelated so it’s not so clear
anymore we’re in space something is
placed and it makes it harder to see
what’s happening on the picture but what
happens if we combine all of these
effects you see the original then you
see the pixelation then the blur and
then they increase contrast and of all
these things combined make it very hard
to pick out that there’s actually a
house standing at the side of the link
so it gets tougher and tougher as these
problems accumulate and hearing what
kind of the most crucial part of hearing
is extracting information in speech and
if you’re not trying to read this um
it’s probably quite exhausting and you
could not read a whole book like this
and this is kind of the situation that
maybe our grandparents are going through
when we’re coming for for a coffee like
they can’t listen for like the first
five minutes
but spending a whole afternoon multiple
people talking it gets very exhausting
picking out the information out of this
and so this is kind of the stage where
we’re getting a hearing aid so when you
cannot even with the miracles of your
brain being able to reconstruct this
information with half of the letters
missing this is kind of the stage where
we’re getting an hearing aid so when our
hearing is already quite a bit gone and
so if we compare the two vision it’s not
like getting glasses but it’s more like
getting a guide dog when you’re blind so
it’s really happening very late and this
also explains the stigma around hearing
loss it’s happening very late when you
are already quite impaired and a lot of
information in the sound space is
missing so what is the equivalent of
glasses to a hearing aid that starts
earlier hearing is of course not only
extracting information out of a
reading is not only extracting text but
if we look at it look at a painting it’s
not only about seeing maybe that there
is a tree standing on a hill but it’s
really on catching these fine subtleties
the brushstroke of the artists when we
look at a painting so what’s the
equivalent in sound of course it’s music
if we look at the music industry the
music industry has put in a lot of
effort to improve sound quality the
artists practices has a lot has very
expensive instruments goes to a great
recording studio great mastering studio
it’s put on on a very lossless file
formats and the fan then is buying very
expensive speakers or headphones to
really get all these details that the
artist puts in to really enjoy that but
if the hearing ability and the last step
is not considered there is something
missing to understand this a little bit
more there is besides the dimension that
I showed you before
there was the kind of the loudness of
sound
there’s also frequencies would soak the
frequencies they go from low to high
like the keys on a piano and I’m going
to play again a sound which is going
from 20 kilo Hertz to 22 kilo Hertz and
I would ask you again to lift your hand
while you hear the sound and take it
down when you don’t anymore because yeah
the higher end is what we lose first
so these are the frequencies and this
teenager can hear up to 20,000 kilohertz
and as we age and there’s where speech
is happening so speech is in a very
lower frequent on the relatively lower
frequencies and a teenager hears to a
very high region and so as we age our
hearing ability Goes Down and it’s
slowly eating into the speech area so it
becomes harder and harder to us to
understand someone but when we look at
music for example taking a violin a
violin is going up to around 15,000 kilo
Hertz so the hearing loss is affecting
already the details in music and so if
we are listening to an orchestra and not
considering our hearing ability it’s
like missing out on all these players
they could just stay at home and you
would have the same experience so and so
kind of not taking taking care of this
this last step of hearing ability is
ifer compared again to vision it’s like
spending a lot of money on an Ultra HD
television and then just deciding to not
put on your glasses so you really don’t
enjoy what you’re paying for then and so
what is the equivalent of glasses in
hearing like glasses for the ears we had
made me recall it to sound
personalization we built an algorithm
that models the human ear then can bring
those details to you – you’re here above
zone again so that you can enjoy it
enjoy those details but we don’t believe
that we all should start wearing hearing
aids now to enjoy the sounds around us
but we are already having devices that
we consume our audio with for example
the smartphone so we can put this
algorithm on the smartphone and we can
connect it to the hearing test results
so the phone knows how your unique
hearing profile is and can adapt to your
hearing ability so we have users who are
crying because they haven’t heard songs
since their childhood like this
we have people who say they’re
rediscovering their home you
library because they’re seeing
subtleties they’ve never heard before
but of course we’re not only concerned
with even one guy he likes it so much
he’s recording mp3s through our
algorithm saves them then puts them on
an mp3 player to go swimming with so
he’s taking all this effort because he
loves his music so much more with all
these details in um but of course and
this done really really lets them enjoy
and really feel what the artists put in
and really completes this whole journey
of sound so but it’s not only the
smartphone’s if you use to consume audio
it’s also headphones stereo system a car
and we’re building the technology that
in all these places you can connect it
to your hearing profile so that on all
these endpoints you hear the sound as
good as possible I would have loved to
give you a demo right now but it would
be similar to giving my glasses and then
asking how you like them so I really
encourage you to try for yourself since
it’s personalized sound um and really
appreciate it I am a self said in the
beginning that I didn’t like sound that
much but now looking back at the last 15
minutes I really got into sound and I’m
I’m way more careful about noise when
I’m in a bar or when we were outside in
the lobby how loud it is and or riding
on the subway in New York and seeing
what it is doing to hearing so I’ve got
way more conscious and appreciating to
preserve my hearing but on the other
hand also enjoying kind of the quiet
details when I was preparing this talk I
was sitting in sitting in our flat and
was listening around so there was the
wind in the trees birds chirping outside
I hit some water running through the
pipes I even had some neighbors having
sex so there are a lot of interesting
things to discover when you really when
you really listen um so I really
encourage you like down the next break
maybe you just take a moment and fill
the space and really listen what is all
the sounds that are going on and what
kind of richness the dimension of sound
is bringing to your lives
thank you [Applause]