A NEW SOUND

This Innovative Wearable Is Aiming to Combat Rock & Roll’s Legacy of Hearing Loss

A new wristband device from Neosensory is using vibrations and brain training to help everyone from hard rockers to former concert groupies "hear" through their skin

By Sage Anderson

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March 8, 2024

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Neosensory Clarify

Neosensory

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For several of the most popular leading frontmen and musicians from the heavy rock days of “turn it up to eleven”, the question of developing hearing loss was not an if, but a when. Eric Clapton, famous for that proverbial blasting of his guitar tube amp, now cites this as the reason why he’s going deaf. Ozzy Osbourne also performed at such extremely high volumes in Black Sabbath without any protection that it caused permanent, partial deafness. The Who — who was at one point considered the “loudest band in history” at a massive 126 dB — left guitarist Pete Townshed with severe hearing loss thanks to everything from deafening crowds, to literal exploding drum sets.

Other musicians from this era have also reported noise-induced hearing loss or tinnitus as a result of constant exposure to loud noise over the years, including Sting, Bob Dylan, Bono, Roger Daltrey, Mick Fleetwood, and Neil Young. A study published by Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers (H.E.A.R.) revealed that about 60% of rockers who made it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame have suffered from varying degrees of hearing impairment. Many are now sounding the alarm bells for others who work in performance-based industries, as well as frequent concert-goers who are showing up show after show with no protection.

“For a musician, losing your hearing is like losing a hand,” says Steve Lukather of Toto told The Guardian in 2021. Lukather had developed tinnitus in 1986 while touring, and also suffers from hearing loss. Hearing aids have helped him continue his career, but watching the film Sound of Metal about a drummer battling hearing loss “disturbed [him]”. “I know what it’s like to be all muffled up like that. It’s terrifying – and a very real problem.” Even as far back as 1989, Townshed had decided to perform acoustically on the The Who’s tour, using a glass partition for protection against aggressively loud sound.

For the musicians who play live, sound will always be an occupational hazard, but it’s not uncommon even for the general public. Around 15 percent of adult Americans suffer from some form of hearing loss; and that increases to 1 in 3 after the age of 65. Hearing loss, unfortunately, is an inescapable companion to ageing due to failing parts in the ear, but in this case, it’s a lifetime of damage brought on by loud noise exposure. This means that those who spent years attending loud concerts, including performing artists, inadvertently increased their chances of developing hearing loss, which is up to four times more common in professional musicians than any other profession.

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Performing artists are also 57 percent more likely to have tinnitus — chronic ringing or other noise in the ear — which can disrupt their ability to play live music in some severe cases. From a practical standpoint, some of this is due to the fact that for years, musicians shunned the classic foam ear plugs because they muffled and quieted sound, often at the expense of their ability to perceive full acoustics or audio quality. The now 57-year-old drummer of Metallica Lars Ulrich once admitted to playing loud music without any protection for over 35 years of his career. Another factor is that even those who know they have hearing loss, on average wait 10 years to get hearing aids, and 84 percent never act. There is undeniably a perceived “uncool” stigma factor to getting hearing aids — that they were too young, that it wouldn’t seriously affect them, that it “didn’t fit their lifestyle”.

Neosensory

Similar to how street skaters and snowboarders had to actively work to make wearing a helmet seem “cool” to the younger generation, several companies have been attempting to make preventative measures, like plugging up your ears before a concert, more enticing. We’re now in an era of the accessorization of protection, from Vibes analog “High-Fidelity” Earplugs, or Loop’s colorful, earbud-like smart plugs. But what do you do once the damage has been done? Enter: Neosensory Clarify.

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Buy on neosensory $999

Neosensory Clarify: The First Hearing Aid Wristband

For older musicians and fans who didn’t want to give up their love for blaring rock so easily, it’s never too late to reel back in those years. One breakthrough in solution attempting to actually increase hearing comprehension (as opposed to simply preventing further damage) is from Neosensory, a California-based tech company led by Stanford neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman. They’ve partnered with engineers at the forefront of auditory and sensory technology to create a wearable meant to treat hearing loss not through your ears — but through your skin.

“One of the leading causes of tinnitus is prolonged exposure to loud environments,” explained Dr. Eagleman in a previous interview with Rolling Stone. “As you’d expect, the most affected populations include military personnel, construction workers and, you guessed it, musicians and concertgoers.”

Available on Neosensory’s site for $999 (arguably cheaper than some hearing aids, which can get up to $12,000), The Clarify wristband seems like something straight out of a sci-fi B-movie, meant to help people with hearing loss experience speech via vibrations on the skin. So how does it work? Equipped with Neosensory’s machine-learning algorithms, the band vibrates in response to specific sounds in speech that can be difficult to discern to those losing the upper frequencies in their hearing. According to the company, this non-invasive method utilizes neuroplasticity (that “brain retraining” method similar to those popular puzzle apps), and in less than three weeks, the brain adapts to these new inputs and the wearer can interpret vibrations as speech.

Neosensory

Buy on neosensory $999

“When I first started wearing the band, I was very cognizant of the fact that the band is buzzing when I heard different sounds in conversations – for example, a d-sound versus an s-sound,” said John Haecker, a Clarify user. “Now, it’s going immediately and directly into my brain. I don’t have the perception of the buzz on the skin anymore, I only have the impression of the word in my brain. And I know exactly what the speaker has said.” Another user, David Sheehan, remarked, “With hearing aids, I would only hear the wrong word at a higher volume. Clarify is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

While most users could feel the band vibrating in response to speech during the first few days of wearing it, after a while, they reported no longer even feeling the vibrations — just “hearing through the skin”. The brain mechanism that Clarify uses is actually not unlike what blind person experiences when reading Braille. The sense of touch is transformed and repurposed into a sensory input for language. Another familiar example of “sensory substitution” is lip-reading — with practice, your sense of sight can be honed to help generate additional language information for the brain.

Similar to the company’s former Buzz and Duo device (the latter meant to help with tinnitus), Neosensory’s latest wristband is part of a broader mission to use technology to address auditory health challenges. Now, users can seamlessly switch between “Tinnitus Mode” and “Speech Clarity” mode on the Clarity band via the Neosensory App. The best part? There’s no extra charge for accessing the different modes, which is huge given that hearing loss goes along with tinnitus in 80 percent of cases.

But how does it compare when put up against hearing aids? After all, isn’t that the standard approach? But according to peer-reviewed study published last year, participants with high-frequency hearing loss who wore the Clarify wristband for six weeks actually demonstrated notable enhancements in understanding speech — even for the users who were already wearing hearing aids.

Clarify

Buy on neosensory $999

Eagleman, a co-author of the study, remarked that “the results from this study are significant, because they represent a meaningful change in the daily experiences of people with high-frequency hearing loss. The wristband is a novel and effective solution for those who struggle with speech comprehension, a challenge that has long been a barrier to effective communication and quality of life.”

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The bottom line? We can learn a lot from musicians about how to balance our love for rocking out to loud music with protecting our hearing health. Over the years, various performers have highlighted techniques that have helped them – wearing in-ear monitors and moulded earplugs, staying hydrated, using podcasts as a distraction to fall asleep, etc. But those are more of a bandaid on a pyrotechnic explosion-sized problem. Even though hearing loss is inevitable for us all to some extent as we age, it still remains largely untreated, on and off the stage. Musicians should be caring as much for their hearing in the present as they do for their instrument, and so should you. Neosensory’s Clarify might just be the next best step.

Buy on neosensory $999

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