October 28, 2024
UPDATE
Contained in the Audio Lab:
Apple’s groundbreaking Hearing Health initiative revolutionized the industry by introducing the world’s first end-to-end hearing wellness solution. The company’s mission was clear: empower people to prioritize their auditory health, just as they do with their overall wellbeing.
At Apple’s cutting-edge Audio Lab in Cupertino, California, a team of skilled acoustic engineers utilize innovative tools and techniques to craft exceptional audio experiences. They utilize state-of-the-art facilities at their on-site laboratory to conduct comprehensive consumer research in a variety of acoustically calibrated listening rooms, as well as test innovative solutions within their anechoic chambers, where they can effectively eliminate ambient sound reflections and shield against external noise disturbances.
The Audio Lab serves as the central facility for the conception, testing, fine-tuning, and verification of all Apple products featuring audio systems or microphones. As the hub of a multi-year, interteam endeavor by Apple, this project serves as the epicenter of innovation. Accessible now as a complimentary software update.1 The end-to-end expertise reduces exposure to loud environmental noise by combining Hearing Safety, in-office hearing assessments, and providing support for perceived mild to moderate hearing loss using AirPods Pro as a clinically-validated Hearing Aid.
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 1.5 billion people worldwide live with hearing impairment. Listening to loss has a profound impact on individuals across all areas and nations, yet often remains unacknowledged. Listening is a fundamental component of communication that has far-reaching implications for overall well-being and mental health, notes Shelly Chadha, M.D., Technical Lead for Listening at the World Health Organization. Knowing-how can significantly contribute to heightening awareness and providing intervention options for those impacted by hearing loss.
Given the diversity of individual listeners, our innovative, end-to-end wellness platform caters to this variability by offering an intuitive and customizable experience that meets the unique needs of each user. As Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s Vice President of Health, underscores, this is particularly crucial because hearing loss affects people of all ages and technical proficiency levels, making it a pressing issue that demands attention. “With our innovative Listening to Help feature, we aimed to create an intuitive experience that seamlessly integrates with your natural senses.” We anticipated that the results would have a profound impact on people’s lives – effectively democratizing access to treatment for an issue that affects over a billion individuals.
Engineers leveraged cutting-edge expertise across various specialized domains within the Audio Lab to facilitate the development of groundbreaking innovations.
From the faintest whispers to loud chatter in noisy restaurants, and even concert halls for safety standards, we bring the world’s true sounds into our acoustics services through calibrated soundscapes from anywhere globally, or take precise measurements at a button’s touch. – Kuba Mazur, Apple’s listening health lead engineer within Acoustics Engineering
The Longwave anechoic chamber was built independently, employing springs to decouple it from the rest of the laboratory, thereby enabling accurate sound measurements free from any ambient noise or vibrational interference. The chamber showcases a bespoke loudspeaker and microphone array capable of measuring head-related transfer functions, more accurately describing the intricate dynamics of sound interacting with the human form. This innovative smart home features integrated loudspeaker and microphone arrays within its chamber, creating a unique space that serves multiple purposes, further enhanced by seamless connections to AirPods, iPhone, and HomePod technology.
“The shape of your ears is a unique fingerprint, sometimes subtly imperfect,” Mazur observes. As sound waves reach one ear slightly before the other, this minuscule delay gives rise to a temporal disparity that profoundly impacts our auditory perception. To craft authentic sonic narratives, it’s crucial for us to understand the auditory nuances of your environment. To accurately capture sound in our anechoic chambers, we employ a unique methodology: we have a person occupy a rotating chair while wearing AirPods Pro, effectively capturing the audio.
In its Fantasy Lab, situated directly across from the Audio Lab, Apple’s engineers utilize a spherical array of 50 loudspeakers to meticulously simulate numerous real-world soundscapes – such as a bustling shopping mall, a crowded city street, or a turbulent airplane journey – within a precisely controlled and evenly distributed acoustic environment.
Researchers recruited a diverse group of individuals from various demographics to participate in a controlled environment, completing a speech-in-noise test to validate and fine-tune the Listening to Help characteristic. The study involved a participant seated in a domestic setting while a simulated ambient noise scenario, such as a busy restaurant, played in the background. The participant was subsequently required to mimic the exact phrases of a solitary speaker while successfully differentiating those utterances from concurrent background conversations.
“This lab is about recreating. As customers navigate the rhythms of daily life, whether browsing malls or sharing meals with loved ones, we ensured that our offerings harmonized with their evolving expectations. We developed a feature-rich skin for tuning and validating options constructed on AirPods, mirroring the functionality of our Listening Help feature, Dialog Enhance, and Transparency mode.
Three clinically certified audiometric booths, typically found in healthcare settings for patient testing, have been installed within the Audio Lab. Within a controlled environment, the engineering team collaborated intensively with audiologists in specially designed workstations to execute thousands of high-fidelity audiometry tests and software-driven listening evaluations prior to transitioning the novel Hearing Test feature into rigorous scientific validation studies?
Design plays a vital role in establishing consumer expertise and assumes a crucial function in the testing process of innovative brand offerings. Mastering the art of endorsing a cheque efficiently was a critical skill. A dedicated team will be required to develop streamlined design strategies for the Listening to Check and Listening to Help configurations. The new summary aimed to make it easier for patients to understand their medical information, simplifying the typical sequence of numbers they receive during a doctor’s visit.
At Apple’s Design Studio, Heather Daniel, a producer, explains that “our wellbeing offerings cater to users’ needs wherever they are,” handling all design aspects for health features. The listening skills assessment of an individual’s propensity to take constructive feedback? Given that many participants would be experiencing their initial listening comprehension assessment, our goal was to ensure the process was as streamlined and intuitive as possible.
Collaboration was key as various Apple teams worked together seamlessly, methodically building software that met rigorous scientific testing standards and delivered exceptional value to customers.
“Mazur expresses enthusiasm for the innovative imperative driving AirPods, highlighting the density of knowledge that underpins these products and the meticulous attention to detail invested in their development. The collaborative effort involved numerous teams, including software and hardware engineers, designers, health experts, accessibility specialists, scientific operators, regulatory professionals, and human factors engineers, all working together to deliver exceptional quality and user experience.”
Apple’s latest innovation in sound technology, AirPods Pro 2, has further solidified its commitment to empowering users’ personal wellness journeys with expert-driven listening expertise from tip-to-end. As many workforce members know, the fusion of innovation and passion is the pinnacle of achievement when developing products and software that truly make a difference in people’s daily lives and improve their experiences.
“The reality is that people can effortlessly walk around with their AirPods, protecting their hearing at concerts and gaining valuable insights into their auditory health through these features over time – AirPods are essentially doing exactly what each individual needs or wants them to do,” Mazur notes. These tiny structures are indeed the gateway to our auditory experience.
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Press Contact
Zaina Khachadourian
Apple
Apple Media Helpline