Not all hearing aids are created equal... So, which features are important to you?

         

          Automatic vs Manual Volume Control

Hearing aids may either be manually controlled or automatically adjusted. Manual hearing aids typically have a rotary volume control, which allows the user to turn the sound down in loud environment or to turn the sound up in the quiet environment. This manipulation is necessary to achieve hearing comfort. Alternatively, an automatic hearing aid is able to adjust the sound independently. No fiddling required.

 

Whistle Block (Feedback Control)

In the past it was common to hear the aids whistle from time to time because of imperfect fit in the ear canal. Now it is possible to get a hug without experiencing the embarrassment of your loved ones hearing the whistle. A number of digital instruments exist with capacity to remove unwanted whistling caused by feedback. Sometimes whistling can be contained by turning down the volume of the hearing aid. This would, however, also remove sounds that are desired. By introducing a sophisticated adaptive feedback suppression even with large hearing losses unwanted feedback can be avoided with no compromise to the quality of sound.

Open Ear Acoustics

With conventional hearing aids sounds may become trapped and continually bounce off the ear canal. As a result sounds such as your own voice or chewing  may be perceived as unnatural and excessively loud. As if you are speaking from inside the barrel. With Open Ear Acoustics less sound is trapped inside the ear canal and as a result sound are perceived as more natural.

Receiver in the Ear Technology (RITE)

RITE a.k.a. CRT (canal receiver technology) is the latest offering in the miniature open fit range of products. This replaces the previously used conduction tubes (or open tubes)  with an electrical wire that drives a miniature loudspeaker, located at its end, in the ear canal. RITE products are characteristically stable, highly flexible, very reliable and allow for a miniature design.

 

 

                   Directional Microphones

   Directional microphones are a set of microphones designed to pick up a range of sounds in a focused field. Directional microphone technology is used when isolation of sound sources, such as speech and noise is important.

Omni-directional (non-directional) microphone picks up sound from all directions equally. It receives sound naturally, capturing all the acoustic reverberations and nuances. However, this is not adequate for hearing speech in noisy situations.

It is well documented that hearing aids with directional microphones improve the wearers’ speech understanding in noise. Even better results are obtained when directional microphones adaptively scan for a speech signal (adaptive) and/or maintain directionality for both low and high pitched sounds.

Adaptive Directional Microphones

Traditional directional microphone systems (Fixed Directional) are of great benefit when speech is directed at you.   In real life this is difficult to control, especially so when you are in a conversation with  multiple speech sources. Adaptive directional microphones will focus on speech wherever it is in the environment.

Digital Background Noise Reduction

 Digital Background Noise Reduction will clean up a noisy signal. Once the background noises are detected and suppressed, you are left with better speech understanding and less unwanted noise.

Multi-band Background Noise Reduction

Multi-band Background noise suppressing systems  are able to optimize and exclude multiple non-speech noise sources even from the most challenging noisy situations.

Environmental Classification

In order to maximise comfort and intelligibility advanced hearing devices attempt to classify the listening environment of the wearer and apply specific settings to the instrument. By examining time delays, loudness and frequency differences arriving at twin microphone ports on board the hearing instrument the acoustic environment can be classified. Usually sound is classified into speech in noise, speech in quiet, wind noise or music. The application of specific electronic strategies based upon environmental classification enhances the benefit of the hearing instrument and facilitates data logging and data learning strategies to be applied.

 

Binaural Processing of Signal

This technology has been a significant breakthrough in the field of hearing rehabilitation. The new generation of instruments,  able  to communicate with each other is emerging.  These instruments work together as a single system that continuously sense the listening environment and automatically synchronize selected core digital signal processing in both instruments. This ensures both devices are operating optimally to provide the maximum benefit to the wearer.

Data Learning

The Data Learning technology  supports the notion that learning is a lifelong process. New generation hearing instruments literally "learns" volume and tone preferences for each program. This means that the instruments will continue improving and fine-tuning themselves to user-defined specifications.

Frequency Compression or Transposition

Most hearing aids are designed to amplify specific sounds in reference to degree of damage to the cochlea (organ of hearing). So if the loss is high pitched, the hearing aid would amplify high pitched sounds. If the degree of loss is particularly significant sometimes certain areas of the cochlea get severely damaged or completely destroyed. As a consequence the sound can no longer be clearly amplified by the hearing aid in that particular region. Either frequency compression or frequency transposition techniques allow some of the hearing aids to transfer speech information from severely damaged areas to the areas with lesser damage to provide a fuller spectrum of sound to the hearing instrument user.

 

 

 

 

Rechargeable Hearing Aids

New generation hearing aids may utilize a rechargeable battery technology, where aids are left on the charger nightly and would be fully charged every morning.

Remote Controls

 

 When its essential that you retain control of your hearing aid at ALL times you may have a remote control unit fitted to override hearing aid settings to improve clarity of speech in the complex noisy surroundings. Such units may be integrated with wrist watches and key rings or may have Bluetooth capability.

 

Streamers

The Streamer is a body-worn device and a gateway to connecting your hearing instruments to the expanding world of electronic media. The Streamer enables signals from modern communication devices, such as mobile phones and televisions, to be streamed wirelessly into your hearing instruments. If you have two hearing instruments, the sound will be directed to both ears. This solution gives you the world’s smallest hands-free headset and personal headphones for many listening and communication purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To discuss the latest advances in hearing aid technology feel free to have a chat to our audiologists. Some recently developed features may be a significant improvement in comfort or speech clarity on your current hearing aids.