Better in their words…

I had read these kind of tools were being worked on. Looks very interesting and promising.
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By Geoffrey A. Fowler

There’s a certain agony to walking into a restaurant and realizing you won’t be able to hear a conversation over the clatter. But for many people there’s one thing even worse: wearing a hearing aid.

The term conjures up frailty and the inevitability of old age. Up to 98 million Americans say they struggle with hearing loss, yet only 8 million or so wear traditional hearing aids. That leaves many millions who cope by reading lips or coaxing everyone else to speak up.

A new gadget called the Soundhawk Smart Listening System offers help to people who know they have a hearing problem but don’t think they need a $3,000 prescription hearing aid. The $300 Soundhawk isn’t a medical device—it’s app-controlled ear gear for when you could use a little audio enhancement.

There’s a chance the tech in the Soundhawk’s earpiece and companion microphone could change the way you experience the world, a giant accomplishment for any gadget. But it faces an incredible cultural challenge: Even if we get comfortable acknowledging hearing loss, will it become acceptable to stick a device in your ear during supper?

The Soundhawk is for people who don’t mind looking a bit like a cyborg. Instead of a discreet behind-the-ear loop, like most hearing aids, the Soundhawk protrudes from the ear canal, taking design cues from Bluetooth headsets and wearable fitness trackers. Long hair might obscure it, but the Soundhawk isn’t designed to hide.

I don’t have diagnosed hearing loss, but I tested the Soundhawk at busy restaurants and dinner parties and on noisy streets—places where even a guy in his 30s finds himself straining to catch the conversation. I also lent a Soundhawk to people in the target demographic, including my parents, who have difficulty hearing in noisy restaurants and, like their son, are eager to test new gadgets.

Our senses are complex and personal, so experiences with the Soundhawk varied. When I used it, I was sometimes overwhelmed by hearing everything louder. But the device made it possible to have conversations that normally would have been difficult. It helped my mom hear my dad well enough that they said they’d seriously consider buying one for traveling or going out to a crowded restaurant.

The Soundhawk, which you can buy on its company website, brings some Silicon Valley engineering and marketing to medical devices. But it is hardly the first attempt at an alternative to medical hearing aids. Called personal sound-amplifying products, these devices range from $10 “ear glasses,” which purport to magnify sound without electronics, to the $375 Etymotic Bean earpiece that looks just like a hearing aid.

The Soundhawk’s makers—among them Rodney Perkins, founder of the California Ear Institute at Stanford and hearing-aid maker ReSound, among other health companies—took pains to do more than make a cheaper hearing aid. The Soundhawk comes with a sleek carrying case that houses a 27-hour battery, so it can double as a cordless charger. You can customize the Soundhawk to your ears and tune it to different situations, like restaurants or cars, using an app.

Putting a Soundhawk in my ear for the first time was a little disorienting. The device itself, which weighs 6 grams, sat comfortably. But suddenly, sounds I thought I knew sounded exaggerated: My keyboard became a jackhammer, and a closing door became a car crash.

Higher pitched sounds took on a tinny sheen. A noisy Irish bar sounded like the cacophony of trays and plates in a cafeteria. Soundhawk Chief Executive Mike Kisch said this was a perception issue that would pass with time. “Our brains are very good at noticing new things, but quickly become bored with them,” he says. At a noisy dinner party about a week into using the device, the Soundhawk did help me focus on my own conversation. When I took it out of my ear, I missed the edge it gave me. Without it, everything sounded duller.

My parents, neither of whom has been medically diagnosed with hearing loss either, got a lot more out of the Soundhawk. They had stopped going to one of their favorite restaurants because its high ceilings made it too noisy. But when my mom wore the Soundhawk, the words she heard were crisper. My folks carried on a lovely conversation at the restaurant. If anything, my mom said, Dad would have to learn to speak less loudly.

When they used it to Skype with my brother, my mom didn’t have to keep asking him to repeat himself. And it helped my dad keep up while sitting in the back seat of the car. “I think the Soundhawk would make family outings much more enjoyable,” he said. Soundhawk’s app could use some improvement. It allows you to tune the device to your needs but offers just sliding scales for vague-sounding factors, such as “Full/Bright” and “Boost.”

The biggest problem we all experienced was increased volume on stuff that wasn’t of interest, like other people’s conversations. The Soundhawk has a directional microphone on its earpiece, but no earpiece can, on its own, filter out background noise, says Robert Sweetow, a professor of otolaryngology at the University of California, San Francisco. Background noise often has the same frequencies as voices we want to hear.

That’s why the Soundhawk’s wireless microphone, similar to those available with some premium hearing aids, is key. A microphone “can enhance the signal-to-noise ratio better than anything else,” Mr. Sweetow says. Indeed, conversations were much easier for me to hear when the person I was speaking with wore the Soundhawk’s microphone clipped to his or her shirt and pointing up. (The microphone can work up to 30 feet away, but it isn’t a great spy device.)

Still, there’s a stigma to handing someone a microphone. “If anything is going to hold the Soundhawk back, it is going to be this,” Mr. Sweetow says.

So the Soundhawk has to change not one, but two social norms. Bluetooth headsets for cellphones were an early hit but came to be associated with jerks who talked too loudly in public. Maybe the earpiece is due for a comeback: The main character in Spike Jonze’s near-futuristic “Her” wears one to communicate with his beloved operating system. The Soundhawk can also be used to operate a smartphone.

I felt conspicuous wearing a Soundhawk in public. A guest at a San Francisco dinner party asked whether my cyborg gear was recording everything. Some of the negative impressions left by the Google Glass camera-equipped headgear are hard to shake. My parents weren’t really bothered, though. They were thrilled to find technology that could help them.

Anyone with trouble hearing in a quiet room should probably check in with an audiologist. For the rest, experiences with the Soundhawk could vary depending on a very personal combination of your ears, your brain and your relationship with family and friends. That’s why its makers have smartly offered a 60-day money-back guarantee, including free shipping and returns.

The Soundhawk may even appeal to family members who might buy one for a person whose hearing loss has started to disrupt their own lives. It’s easy to forget that when you can’t hear, the people around you have to make adjustments, too.

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at Geoffrey.Fowler@wsj.com or on Twitter @geoffreyfowler

Hearing Aid? No, Soundhawk Is an Ear Wearable – WSJ.