i wonder how long until they can match average default human hearing? and if it would in principle be possible to exceed it. i suppose that would depend on if the bottleneck is the sensitivity of the cochlear nerve of the sensitivity of the peripheral auditory system.
If we were to exceed human hearing would people then get implants without a medical need?
That's a wild one, never even thought about that. Hearing changes tremendously with age, sensitivity and range drop perceptively between 'newborn' and as old as 16, and it keeps on descending after that. This is mostly a function of the various components of the cochlear channel getting stiffer and less conductive to sound from outside, I'm not sure to what extent bypassing that would allow you to recover range but sensitivity seems to be a pretty clear win already.
