Did you know: not all sound you hear comes in through your ear canals! It's true - and one of the major factors in sound transmission for human hearing lies well below the surface. Like this customer who tried out Walker's Raptor, one key to effective hearing is actually bone conduction. Take a look:
Love it. I have only one ear that hears. The other ear has inner parts but that's all. This bone conducting hearing aid allows me to hear stereo for the first time. I can hear what direction sound comes for the first time ever and they work great with earplugs in my industrial work environment. I'll be buying another pair for backup.
How can bone conduction help you hear better? Simple: it can bypass many of the structures of the ear, channeling sound into and through your skull, and the inner-ear components therein.
Here's how it works.
To take it back to science class for a second - we know sound is energy that travels as a vibration. This vibration carries differently through different states of matter. Sound in the air is audible for a few feet, as the molecules of air are very spread out and moving chaotically; vibration doesn't transfer cleanly from one air molecule to the next, so a lot of the sound's energy is lost. Compare this to sound underwater: the water molecules are much closer together than air molecules, so the sound vibration transfers more easily from one molecule to the next. The result is that the sound vibrations are maintained so well in water, that whales can communicate and hear each other across miles of ocean distance. So we know that sound can travel through different states of matter - gasses like the air, and fluids like the ocean. Following this logic, solid objects also transfer sound more effectively than the air does -
And that's where your bones come in.
A good portion of the sound that reaches our inner ears and gets translated into signals our brain can understand actually comes through our bones. This is called bone transmission, and it can be an unexpectedly effective way to transfer sound. If you've ever tried to sleep with a neighbor listening to loud music, and you've found it impossible to escape the pounding bass no matter what you tried, you've experienced bone transmission. After passing through your neighbor's walls, that deep bass sound then transfers through the air, and then through your very bones - so it doesn't matter if you put your hands over your ears or wear fantastic ear plugs, you're still hearing the music. Through your bones. Via bone conduction. Which is a little creepy, and sometimes inconvenient - but we can also make bone conduction work for us.
Walker's Raptor is a bone conduction headset that can amplify ambient sound or let you listen to music. What does "bone conduction headset" mean? Well, first, the headset doesn't have normal earpieces. In fact, it doesn't go into your ear canals at all. Instead, the audio sits approximately over your temples. Instead of the sound entering through your ear canals, it travels through the bones of your skull, reaching your inner ear without going through your outer ear at all. It's a little like sending the sound straight to your brain. In fact, bone conduction bypasses your ear canal so completely that you can wear a bone conduction headset for music listening at the same time you wear ear plugs for hearing protection.
Obviously, bone conduction like the Raptor offers isn't going to be the solution for everyone with a partial hearing loss. But for some folks, like the customer who wrote in above, bone conduction is a way to listen to music and other audio in a way you simply cannot experience with any other type of headset. And if you're in that latter category, you should really consider giving it a try.
And for anyone who needs headphones but cannot tolerate having earpieces in their ears, bone conduction is a smart solution.
If you'd like to try bone conduction for yourself, you can check out the Raptor from Walker's Game Ear right here.
And until next time, be safe and do the right thing.
Tom Bergman, Vice President
Ear Plug Superstore
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