The following article proposes to use hearing aid technology to enhance consumer electronics, specifically to tune out annoying noises from your environment.
I personally think he overestimates the current state of the art in hearing aid technology and especially the quality of today’s signal processing algorithms, but I like the idea. I’d love to see the two markets merge in the future, since it will most probably result in dropping prices for hearing aids and awesome features for consumer headphones.
http://chrismaury.com/post/20294864914/its-time-to-level-up-headphone-tech
Actually, I’m quite certain that noise cancelling technology in Bose headsets is very similar to what is used in hearing aids today. The trouble for both devices is that the sounds you often want to suppress –speech babble– is too similar to the sounds you want to hear — speech.
No doubt, hearing aids have a ways to go, but the strides over the last 10 years have been incredible.