Ask HN: You think we can achieve better audio fidelity by bypassing ears?

[dusted]

I'm a lover of music, as I'm nearing the end of my 30's I notice my hearing degrading. My wife will be amazed by both how good I am at hearing detail, and how bad my hearing is in general..

In other words, my brain is well able to process audio, to the point of augmenting what my ears are starting to objectively lack.. I often listen to music with an analyzer like SonicVisualiser to help me pick out things that my ears have trouble with..

Do you think it's feasible within the next 10 years or so, that we can have implants to get high-fidelity audio delivered to our brains without the need for well-functioning ears? I need it within time-frame because I'm worried that my hearing will have degraded to the point where my brain will lose the ability to process the audio..

Any other ideas? I've thought about trying to apply electric stimulation to my tounge as an augment but I worry (besides nerve damage) that the response will be too slow, too low-resolution and too different to actually augment the listening experience..

I'm not talking about helping handicapped to hear (though it should be a great side-effect) but general-purpose usage for those of us who can't accept that we will gradually become unable to perceive music like we used to..

[jleyank]

Ear nfections, effects of (childhood) diseases, ambient and environmental noise, turning sh*t up to 11, headphone overuse, …. Maybe he’s a club musician and has stood in front of amp/speaker stacks too long. Shooting damages one ear and even dental hygienists can burn holes in their hearing from their tools. Never wore ear protection when making noise?

Barring some magic from pharma to regrow nerve endings or to reattach hairs it ain’t coming back. Hearing aids are expensive and not ass good as real hearing. Protect what you got. Always hearing the wind blow or a waterfall sux.

[raydiatian]

Seems doubtful. Economics & science aren’t there. World is wrapping itself around Cold War II. Lot of economists saying we’re headed for a dark age of a decade. Furthermore, science just recently made sense of the chemical processes that turn sound into electrical signals, as the last holdout of the senses. If you’re holding out for an Neuralink implant, that shit is all vaporware.

How are you that age having hearing problems without tinnitus?

[salawat]

Yes... Continue down the rabbit hole by which media companies will require brain maps so they can use Transcranial nerve stimulation to close the analog gap.

Only good can come of such things. /s