Hearing Aid Advancements
Hearing Aid Advancements, In the last two hundred years, many advancements have been made in the realm of personal sound amplification.
Digital hearing aids
Digital hearing aids, which allow audiologists to program each device according to the users specific degree of hearing loss. They can now be adjusted for volume accordingly.
Today’s hearing aids are unique in that they can remove distracting background noise for a clearer listening experience. This is the only advancement that’s come along, though. Some aids are available with remote controls that allow the user to adjust various settings. There are still others with omni-directional microphones. This detects sound from multiple directions. Hearing aids have progressed a lot since the 1800’s. That is when the first ear trumpets arrived on the scene. The advancements have come along fast one after another. You’ll find that most hearing aids made today are digital, in fact Self-Learning
These days, hearing aids feature amazing self-learning or regulating tendencies. These are truly smart hearing aids. They adjust settings like volume automatically after a period of time according to how the user likes it Noise Filtration. Older hearing aids amplified all sound. This was great for hearing words. This also presented an added challenge of filtering out the background noise that was also amplified.
Today’s hearing aids
Today’s hearing aids can easily filter out that noise so that the user can hear words but not all the other stuff. Improvements in wireless technology have allowed for improved speech recognition and SNR, which stands for signal-to-noise ratio. Recent advancements mean hearing aids can actually communicate with each other as in the case of left and right ear instruments.
Digital magnetic wireless communication
Many manufacturers are allowing the use of digital magnetic wireless communication via chips in the devices that control settings like switch position and microphone modes. Digital noise reduction technology goes well beyond that of directional microphones.
Single Sided Deafness Technologies is like CROS devices and bone conduction devices. They allow the good ear to receive signals from the bad ear to improve on amplification. Before these big advancements in digital technology, those who suffered from single-sided deafness had to contend with greater background noise and were relegated to using their good ear to hear what was being said.
The First Digital Hearing Aids
The first digital hearing aids, came out initially in 1996. They utilized DSP, which stands for digital signal processing. Ideal for digital noise reduction, DSPs provided a boost in processing speeds which increased the ability to hear.