David Faulkner asked:




What are digital hearing aids?

The earliest hearing aids, like standard telephones, employed analog technology. Digital hearing aids are not better than analog hearing aids simply because they are digital; the many features which digital signal processing allows manufacturers to incorporate into their hearing aids are what makes the digital hearing aids so impressive.

Digital hearing aids accomplish this by transforming sounds into a series of numbers, or “digits”. The computer chips inside digital hearing aids then apply math formulas to the digits and “maneuver” them into controlling sounds that digital hearing aids wearers actually experience. Using computer chip technology, the digital hearing aids can pack a great deal of functionality into a very small area.

Features Of Digital Hearing Aids

Digital hearing aids are “smart.” The digital signal processing used in digital hearing aids has been borrowed from the military and music recoding industries. Unlike analog hearing aids which convert sounds into electrical impulses which can be adjusted, to a point, to meet the needs of the hearing impaired person, the digital hearing aids can actually distinguish between voices and noise, and can be programmed to amplify voices while deadening “noise.” Digital hearing aids provide much clearer voice transmission in the presence of background noise than their analog counterparts.

Digital hearing aids also offer a solution to the feedback, or whistling, which often accompanies analog hearing aid use. Analog users often solve the feed back problem by simply turning down their hearing aids, but this also decreases their ability to hear the things they want to hear.

Some digital hearing aids have been designed to “monitor’ the sounds entering and exiting the hearing aids and determine whether or not they are feedback. If they are, the hearing aids will instantly cancel them.

Cost Factors

The prices of digital haring aids vary according to the technological features they offer. Even the low-end digital haring aids will provide great noise management, limited feedback management, and outstanding sound quality in ordinary situations. The most expensive digital hearing aids, however, will allow wearers to hear even the faintest noises, eliminate all feedback without a corresponding decrease in volume, and have a directional microphone which can be turned toward wearer’s front, eliminating any surrounding noises.

If you are considering digital hearing aids, first consult an audiologist to determine the both the degree and cause of your hearing impairment, and the size and contours of r inner ear. If you have been using analog hearing devices, it may take some weeks for you to become fully accustomed to digital haring aids, and you’ll have to be prepared to return to the audiologist during that time so he or she can make adjustments in your digital hearing aids’ programming, until they are perfectly suited to you!

Maxisound Digital Hearing Aids

Steve Evans asked:




Hearing aids are electrical devices that assist perception of speech or other sounds, and they are used for mild to moderate to severe hearing loss by millions of people worldwide. Hearing aids vary in price according to selected style, electronic features.

You should be careful to remember that no matter how impressive a particular hearing aid manufacturer’s device may sound when you are told about it by the salesman, no hearing aids can yet restore normal hearing; but they do offer a substantial benefit to most persons with hearing loss.

Hearing aids are generally not covered by Medicare or commercial insurance and pricing varies according to the manufacturer, vendor, and service arrangements, so you will have to fund the purchase cost yourself.

Before you part with your money you should also bear in mind that even the best hearing devices will seldom last for more than 5 years before they will need replacement. This will therefore not be a one-off purchase cost.

Hearing aids are not a perfect solution either and they do have their limitations. The first hearing aids were all ‘analogue devices’ and based upon a direct amplifier similar to that in a hi-fi. However, it was soon recognised that most people with hearing difficulties can hear some notes but not others, and if the hearing aid was able to amplify the particular range of notes an individual person was unable to hear, by applying a selective filter, the resulting hearing improvement was much better than just amplifying every note equally.

The device which does this very well is called a digital hearing aid, and it is based upon computer technology which converts the sound to data, before filtering the sounds to amplify only those that the owner needs help to hear. The advent of digital technology has allowed this to be achieved in very small devices which can be programmed to only replace those parts of the sound spectrum that the purchaser needs to have amplified.

Now that these digital hearing aids have become common, the buyer of a hearing aid needs to know that hearing aids are distinguished by their technology or circuitry. You will therefore probably be asked whether you want an analogue hearing aid, or a ‘digital’ version.

Both digital and analogue hearing aids look much the same, and usually consist of a battery-powered transistorized microphone/amplifier unit and an earpiece. Hearing aids vary in cost by size and by the type and sophistication of the electronic circuits used to improve your hearing. Digital hearing aid models cost more than analogue aids.

However, the additional cost is worth spending, if you can afford it, as digital hearing aids are said to offer the user a more accurate reproduction of sound, resulting in superior sound quality. This is because digital hearing aids take the continuous sound wave and break it up into very small, discrete bits of information. But, do be aware that many analogue hearing aids are advertised as digital or ‘digital programmable’ simply because they are programmed using a computer, but may not be as good as true digital aids.

This is due to the fact that acoustic programming is not nearly generally as flexible as programmable-and-digital hearing aids. There is ample qualitative and quantitative evidence that digital instruments outperform analog hearing aids. In fact, the circuitry and programming applied to the best fully digital hearing aids represents the state-of-the-art technology available today.

It is said that more than six million Americans wear hearing aids and 20 million more should wear them, if you have a hearing problem, be one of the six million and get the most out of life.

Resound Hearing Aids