Hearing Aid – Features

Features

Hearing Aid Features are explained in this evaluation, which contains the main features of 44 different hearing aids. The difference is in style and in the brand.

This survey has investigated 1,100 people about the features of their hearing aids and how hearing aids work in different circumstances.

Additional features make the hearing aid more expensive in price.

Telecoil

A wonderful feature available on many hearing aids is called the “Telecoil”.

It is also referred to as “t-switch” or “t-coil”. It is nothing more than a tiny coil of wire around a core that will induce an electric current in the coil when it is in the presence of a changing magnetic field. A telecoil can, therefore, be an alternate or supplemental input device for a hearing aid.

This survey concludes that it helps. Tests, performed in an outside lab, found all telecoils were effective.

Telecoils also can be used in rooms equipped with an audio induction loop, also known as a hearing loop or room loop, a cable that circles a room and emits a magnetic signal to the hearing aid.

They help reduce noise and reverberation and can enhance the ability of people with moderate to profound hearing loss to understand what they are hearing.

Thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), many public institutions such as movie theaters, auditoriums, and sports stadiums provide Assistive Listening Systems, which may include headsets or receivers loaned to patrons to help them hear.

Thus, if you have a telecoil equipped hearing aid then you can hear the magnetic signal. Many times you can hear that a lot better than you can hear an acoustic signal.

A telecoil can be manual or automatic, but to use it with a loop, it must be manual.

An interesting feature is also a program selector on the hearing aid that allows users to switch between the acoustic signal from phones and the magnetic signals of room loops.

Directional microphone

A directional microphone helps you converse in noisy environments by making the audio signal in front of you louder than the noise in the rear or from the sides.

Some microphones are designed to hear equally in all directions (omnidirectional), and some are designed to be more sensitive in certain directions.

Many hearing aids come with switchable directional and omnidirectional modes. That is a plus unless the user has difficulty switching between the two. A negative feature of a directional microphone: It is inclinable to wind noise.

Survey results show it helps in loud social settings while listening to the TV or radio when there is noise in the rear or off to the sides, and for hearing household noises.

A single microphone can be made somewhat directional by having ports to receive the sound on both sides of the sensor which detects the sounds. Sounds coming from both sides (most likely background noise) will cancel each other, while sounds coming only from one direction (in front or back of the sensor) will not cancel itself.

Feedback suppression

Feedback suppression is a common method of canceling audio feedback in a variety of electro-acoustic systems such as digital hearing aids. The time-varying acoustic feedback leakage paths can only be eliminated with adaptive feedback cancellation.

Feedback suppression, or digital feedback reduction, uses a power-on delay to help quell squeals when inserting the hearing aid.

Most aids have this feature. It is useful if the hearing aid is close to the telephone, or if the hearing aid displaces slightly when you move your jaw. Another advantage: You can raise the volume without having to worry about feedback.

Other hearing-aid features

Digital noise reduction improves listener comfort and sound quality in noisy environments. For many, it also may improve speech understanding in noise. Noise reduction is the process of removing noise from a signal. All recording devices, both analog and digital, have traits that make them susceptible to noise. Noise can be random or white noise with no coherence, or coherent noise introduced by the device’s mechanism or processing algorithms.

Wax guard – helps keep the aid free of ear wax, a cause of malfunctions, and a major complaint of our survey respondents. Ask the hearing-aid dispenser to teach you how to remove and replace the wax guard, and how often you’ll need to change it.
Vents – are tiny tunnels in ear molds or the one-piece hearing aids that sit in the ear. They help minimize the stuffed-up sensation one feels when wearing hearing aids. They could contribute to improved speech understanding, depending on the vent size.
Low-battery indicator – sounds to alert you that it is time to change batteries. Most new hearing aids have this feature.
Automatic volume control (compression) – provides more amplification for low sound levels than high sound levels, which prevents high sound levels from being intrusively loud. Most aids had this feature.
Manual volume control – lets you adjust the volume to your preferences in a given environment. Some hearing aids have a self-learning feature that automatically adjusts the hearing aid amplification based on how they’re typically used.

Behind-the-ear models

Bluetooth capability – allows hands-free use of cell and regular phones, and streaming from the television.
Direct audio input – allows the aid to be connected by cable to FM systems (effectively, mini-radio stations used in an enclosed space, specifically for hearing-aids users); MP3 players; and other audio devices.
Mini Behind-the-ear models