Using Voice-to-Text Transcription to Examine Outcomes of AirPods Pro Receivers When Used as Part of Remote Microphone System

Hearing difficulty in noise can occur in 10–15% of listeners with typical hearing in the general population of the United States. Using one’s smartphone as a remote microphone (RM) system with the AirPods Pro (AP) may be considered an assistive device given its wide availability and potentially lower price. To evaluate this possibility, the accuracy of voice-to-text transcription for sentences presented in noise was compared, when KEMAR wore an AP receiver connected to an iPhone set to function as an RM system, to the accuracy obtained when it wore a sophisticated Phonak Roger RM system. A ten-sentence list was presented for six technology arrangements at three signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs; +5, 0, and −5 dB) in two types of noise (speech-shaped and babble noise). Each sentence was transcribed by Otter AI to obtain an overall percent accuracy for each condition. At the most challenging SNR (−5 dB SNR) across both noise types, the Roger system and smartphone/AP set to noise cancelation mode showed significantly higher accuracy relative to the condition when the smartphone/AP was in transparency mode. However, the major limitation of Bluetooth signal delay when using the AP/smartphone system would require further investigation in real-world settings with human users.