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The Advantages of Hearing Aid Technology

Technology has advanced so much and the hearing aid industry had no choice but to follow suit. From 1940, when people used a funnel shaped hearing horn that they held up to their ear, to the 1970s and 1980s when you could get a small in the ear hearing aid that amplified everything you heard, to today with hearing aids that have embedded computer software, store your medical information, and adjust according to your exact needs. The advantages of better hearing aid technology are changing people lives every day.

  1. You Get What You Pay For

    • With most products, price goes down as time goes on. Hearing aids have been the opposite. In the 1970s and 1980s, hearing aids were very simple and easy to produce. To make hearing aids better, a miniature computer was developed to function inside the aid without taking up much space. This higher technology makes production harder, more time consuming and more costly thus raising the price to the consumer.

      So the question remains is the technology worth it? The answer is a resounding yes. Compared with what a hearing aid did 20 years ago, new technology has solved most of the complaints and discomforts people have had with hearing aids for so many years. Hearing aids are now prescribed according to your hearing loss, lifestyle, physical make-up and budget. This customization is one of the greatest advantages of new technology; your hearing aid knows what you need amplified, what you don't need amplified, what your surroundings sound like and how loud you like things to be, and it adjusts itself according to all of that input.

    Best Hearing in Noise

    • One of the greatest advancements in hearing aids was the perfection of directional hearing. This technology uses microphones that are programmed by a computer to adjust according to what sound they are receiving. For example, if you are standing on a street corner talking to a friend, the busy street is behind you. Normally with all that traffic noise being picked up and amplified by a hearing aid, you wouldn't have a clue what your friend was saying. With today's hearing aids, the microphone assigned to the back of you would pick up the sound, analyze it, recognize it as street noise and lower the volume of it, all in a split second. While, at the same time, the microphone assigned to your front would pick up the sound of your friend talking, analyze it, recognize it as speech and raise it up to make sure you can hear it. This technology, called "directional microphones, is standard on almost all new hearing aids.

    Plug Me In

    • Another huge improvement came with the ability to program a hearing aid to the user. New hearing aids have digital processors that make sound clear and crisp. They have a chip in them that can be connected to a computer and information, like your hearing loss, is entered into the hearing aid. Now, every sound that it processes is adjusted just for you. Programming allows for a hearing aid to be changed if you lose more hearing. It allows for the addition of programs for new environments you need to hear better in. Hearing aids can be equipped with blue tooth and programmed to work with your cell phone, computer, or radio. The advantages of modern hearing aids have been life changing for the hearing-impaired population.

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