The evolution of Digital Hearing Aid
Since the wooden hearing devices back in the 1500s, with the evolution of technology the hearing aid devices, have also evolved.
“Today in the 21’s century everything went digital and hearing aid devices are no exception.”
The year 1987 is when the first digital units were available but the digital signal technology was developed a whole decade later. Once this happened it revolutionized the hearing aid, making it a digital smart device like the one we have today.
The devices are now a lot smaller and they can digitally process sound, allowing them to distinguish voice from noise and than amplify or dampen these sounds accordingly.
From this point on, the digital hearing aid had a huge success and we see more and more audiologists recommending a digital type of aid to their patients.
These new hearing aids are also smaller in size and can go behind the ear or inside the ear, depending on the consumer’s preference.
“Even though these digital hearing aids are pricey, the consumer is still very interested in them as they can improve life quality.”
Digital hearing aids are compared to the old analog ones, to see where the exact improvement is, mainly because the digital one is way more costly.
Let’s look at several reasons, where digital outshine the analog hearing aid.
1. More comfort
One of the main reasons why digital hearing aid is better than the analog ones.
The users of analog hearing aids feel discomfort which is the result of high intensified sounds. Those who use digital aid find that this has been nullified.
The reason behind this is that digital aids have an input signal-specific band dependence, more channels, and knee pints with lower compression thresholds.
This means more comfort as it reduces the intensity of the sounds of the environment which brought a lot of discomfort to the users of analog aids.
2. Digital noise reduction
This option makes it able to detect and reduce the incoming noise that comes in the form of low-frequency or other specific bands.
There have been studies pointing that the reduction of these aids is not fully reliable, still, most agree that this improves speech recognition and removes the background noises, which makes these devices stand out from the old analog ones.
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3. Digital speech enhancement
The effectiveness of this segment is not fully clear and there is still much research conducted, however it is safe to say that the users have been pleased and it is certainly one of the reasons why people aim to get digital instead of analog hearing aids.
4. Digital feedback reduction
Probably the most advanced feature in digital hearing aids. It monitors the feedback while the listener is wearing the hearing aid.
The filter for cancellation can reduce or completely eliminate feedback. This benefits users that occasional feedback associated with being close to loud objects or jaw movement.
5. Directional microphone
Although there were complications in the development of these the use of direction microphones is well established today.
In some hearing aids, DSP is used to calibrate microphones, control the shape of the directional pattern, automatically switch between directional and omnidirectional modes, and through expansion, reduce additional circuit noise generated by directional microphones.