i.e. off-the-shelf, self-diagnosed, cheap and easy solution for part-time use without getting "medical"

(I say "cheap" because I don't know what the Hearphones will cost but I've helped relatives shop for hearing aids and WOW ... from what I gather, as you step up in price in a company's line of hearing aids, ticking off more boxes in their feature matrix, they're probably just enabled bits of code in an otherwise identical DSP ... and the price increments go like this: $3K-$4K-$5K),

That's pretty self-contradictory.

Is it perhaps about people simply not wanting to admit they have hearing difficulties, these make it a "non-medical" issue and so allow people to address their poor hearing by-passing any potential stigma [they apply to themselves].

My mother needed hearing aids for a long time, but wouldn't get them, seemingly "because they're for old people".