Hearing Aid Technology
Hearing Aids, Yesterday and Today
Technology has come a long way in the past few decades and the advancements are showing no sign of slowing down. If you or someone you know is hearing impaired, take the time to look into the hearing aid products available. The industry is creating hearing devices that are more powerful and more invisible than at anytime in our history. Here’s a glimpse at how far these hearing devices have come.
Hearing Aids before Digital Technology
- Lipreading was taught and useful for people with hearing loss.
- Gestures and facial expressions also gave a clue to the speaker’s message.
- Hearing aids used to amplify all sounds, desired and undesired.
Current Digital Hearing Aid Technology
- Introduced in 1996 by Widex, the Senso system was the first digital hearing aid. It revolutionized hearing aid performance and our ability to hear.
- Digital hearing aids can amplify soft sounds and not amplify louder sounds.
- Hearing aids can be programmed for the individual listener.
- Directional microphone technology is being used in hearing aids to control directional effects more precisely. This processing of sounds has proven to increase word recognition from 10-15% better than conventional microphones. This is helpful in noisy restaurants.
- Compression is reducing amplification as sounds get louder. This can be adjusted to the individuals hearing and sensitivity to sound. Compression can also be programmed for different frequency bands.
- Noise Suppression uses the microprocessor to recognize sound that is constant (like background crowd noise) and reduces the amplification in that frequency range. This gives improved comfort and hearing in noisy settings.
- Speech Recognition uses digital technology to detect and amplify speech-pattern sounds.
- Telecoils detect the presence of a telephone’s electromagnetic field and automatically switches the hearing aid to telephone mode.
