Abstract: Systems and methods disclosed herein provide for low cost hearing assistance to improve intelligible hearing for those with normal hearing and to greatly improve hearing intelligibility for those with hearing problems. One goal of the systems and methods disclosed herein is to make hearing assistance algorithms easily accessible and available by implementing such algorithms using non-dedicated hardware platforms such as non-dedicated mobile computing devices, e.g., smartphones, PDA's and the like. In exemplary embodiments, the systems and method of the present disclosure integrate hearing assistance algorithms with multi-media algorithms in an API stack (similar to the implementation of audio effects such as stereo widening and psychoacoustic bass enhancement) thereby addressing processing delay concerns.