AudioCardio Update: New Features to Improve Hearing Loss & Tinnitus

(Click here to sign up for AudioCardio and use offer code RT20DC for 20% off – includes a 2 week free trial!)

For more than a year now, I have been carefully following the work and progress of an innovative company called AudioCardio.

AudioCardio is an evidence-based mobile app that delivers a new (and proprietary) kind of sound therapy called Threshold Sound Conditioning, which is designed to strengthen your hearing and improve tinnitus by stimulating specific cells inside your ear.

You can think of it as a kind of physical therapy for your hearing. One that can strengthen improve your hearing thresholds without the need for hearing aids or any specialized technology.

(If you haven’t heard of AudioCardio before now, I highly recommend pausing here to read my detailed app review post.)

Until a year ago, whenever a person with hearing loss asked me if they should try hearing aids, my answer was always yes. Hearing aids, and amplification, have long been the primary treatment option for sensorineural hearing loss.

Even if a person was only experiencing mild hearing loss, and it didn’t seem to be affecting their quality of life, I would still encourage them to do a trial run with hearing aids.

With mild to moderate hearing loss, if you still can communicate clearly in most environments, you have no way of knowing what sounds you’re missing. You simply can’t hear what you can’t hear, and hearing aids were the only solution I could recommend – or at least they were until I discovered AudioCardio.

It’s been almost a year since I first wrote about AudioCardio and a lot has changed. So I wanted to share a few updates that I know many of you will be excited to learn about.

What is AudioCardio and How does it work?

In my original review, I explore in detail how AudioCardio works to strengthen and improve hearing thresholds.

But here is a description of how AudioCardio works, written by AudioCardio:

“Our clinically proven Threshold Sound Conditioning (TSC) technology generates personalized sound therapies just below the audible level to help stimulate and strengthen your hearing. AudioCardio™ quickly assesses your hearing and delivers a once a day, one hour sound therapy that you can play passively in the background while you go about your day.

• Your hearing works by processing sound waves traveling through the air
• These sound waves stimulate the cells inside the ear, making them “fire,” and connect to nearby cells, sending these signals to the brain along the auditory pathway. The brain then interprets these signals as sounds.
• Threshold Sound Conditioning technology detects the frequencies that have lost sensitivity (commonly due to noise exposure and aging) and stimulates the cells responsible for those frequencies repeatedly until they build up enough stimulation to “fire” and connect to nearby cells.
• The more these cells “fire” and connect, the stronger and more efficient these connections become, allowing sound signals to travel to the brain more easily.”

Growing evidence:

AudioCardio’s preliminary clinical results have been astonishing.

In a randomized, double blind clinical trial conducted at Stanford University, more than 70% of study participants experienced at least a 10-decibel improvement in their hearing at the targeted frequency after only 2 weeks of using AudioCardio’s Threshold Sound Conditioning therapy for just one hour per day.

The study admittedly featured a small 42-person sample size, but the results are very encouraging and hopeful. So much so, that when I first discovered AudioCardio, I not only ended up partnering with them to help get the word out, but I made a small personal investment in the company as well (as part of a crowdfunded equity raise – something I had never done before and have not done since.)

And as more and more people have started using the app, the anecdotal evidence is growing.

A recent survey was conducted of long-time Audiocardio app users by audiologist Melissa Beers at the Sound Speech and Hearing Clinic, San Francisco, CA. She presented her results at the 2021 American Speech Language and Hearing Association’s annual conference.

Here were her key findings:

• Approximately 40% reported an improvement in their hearing thresholds. The majority of subjects were “not sure” if there had been any hearing changes as they had not yet taken a repeat hearing test.
• Decreases in the severity and frequency of occurrence for tinnitus was observed in 57% of the AudioCardio users. When those responders that did not have tinnitus were removed from the data pool, the improvement for tinnitus reduction was 84%. Specific comments by the users were, “Tinnitus is less noticeable and because of this seems much less frequent,” and “the tinnitus specifically improved when tired at night, reading, or watching TV.”
• Improvement in their ability to understand in complex listening situations was reported by 46% of the AudioCardio users with comments such as, “I am better able to focus on the person talking in spite of considerable background noise.”

Since first writing about AudioCardio last year, I’ve been receiving many positive anecdotal reports from my readers and tinnitus coaching clients as well.

Exciting New Features and Updates:

The biggest AudioCardio news, however, has to do with the suite of new features now available in the app.

In my opinion, the most exciting update is the brand new AudioCardio Pro mode, which allows you to target and strengthen two different hearing frequencies at the same time.

Previously, the app would identify your most damaged frequencies and would automatically target one frequency range at a time. When your hearing thresholds at that frequency range had improved, the app would then target your next worst frequency range.

You also had the option to manually select a specific frequency range to target, but you could still only focus the therapy on one frequency range at a time.

Now you can target two at once, essentially doubling the therapy so that you can target and strengthen your hearing thresholds at all frequency ranges in half the amount of time it would have taken otherwise.

Additionally, AudioCardio has updated the app to allow targeting of three additional important frequency bands that are integral to understanding human speech:

1,500 Hz

• This frequency band ranges from 1,357 ~ 1,614 Hz
• Improving these frequencies may help with hearing human speech consonants like: J, U, Z.
• Examples of 1,500 Hz Sounds: Water dripping and leaves rustling

3,000 Hz

• This frequency band ranges from 2,714 ~ 3,228 Hz.
• Improving these frequencies may help with hearing human speech consonants like: J, U, Z.
• Examples of 3,000 Hz Sounds: Lawn mowers and the sound of thunder

6,000 Hz

• This frequency band ranges from 5,429 ~ 6,426 Hz
• Improving these frequencies may help with hearing human speech and consonants like: F, S, TH.
• Examples of 6,000 Hz Sounds: Phone ringing and watch ticking

 Ongoing Recommendation:

To this day, I still constantly recommend AudioCardio to my tinnitus coaching clients, friends, and family, along with everyone else I encounter experiencing any degree of sensorineural hearing loss.

Even for those with more severe hearing loss, AudioCardio’s sound therapy can work well as a complementary treatment to hearing aids and can be played through your hearing aids (if they are Bluetooth enabled).

If you haven’t tried AudioCardio yet, and you have even mild hearing loss, I highly recommend giving it a try today!

Click here to sign up for AudioCardio and use offer code RT20DC for 20% off – includes a 2 week free trial.

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DISCLAIMER: After extensive testing (by me, my tinnitus coaching clients, and now many of my readers) I decided to make a small personal investment in AudioCardio and also partnered with them as an affiliate to help them get the word out about their new app and technology. Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and if you end up purchasing a subscription to AudioCardio, Rewiring Tinnitus may receive a commission that goes towards the maintenance cost of the website.