Hearing Well for the Holiday Season
The holiday season is a time to celebrate with family and friends. However, it’s also a more difficult time for people with hearing loss, as it can be difficult to follow conversations with their loved ones.
Most hearing aids offer automatic noise reducers, which work without having to touch the hearing aids. This automatic processing is not always enough to let users follow a conversation when there is music, other conversations and laughter in the background. Ambient noise is complex because it includes several sources of sound that are part of our daily lives.
Facilitating Speech Comprehension
Every hearing aid manufacturer is developing new technologies to make listening in noisy environments more accurate and comfortable. The evolution each year is remarkable. For example, one new platform offers digital sound processing that’s three times faster and more efficient than the latest generation of hearing aids. This platform offers different types of sound processing, such as speech optimization, which can enhance speech intelligibility by accurately compressing surrounding noise.
Another platform mimics the way the human brain processes sound. Its automatic noise management feature processes sound several different ways at the same time to differentiate speech from noise, imitating what the brain would do in a difficult listening situation. This platform identifies speech and can reproduce ambient noise in a subdued way, making conversations in noise easier. Sound processing is active at all times, allowing optimal noise management and greater comfort in noisy situations.
Another hearing aid manufacturer offers an automatic operating system for better speech understanding and sound quality in complex listening situations. This technology is based on several functions. It analyzes them and combines them to reproduce the original sound, creating the most natural listening experience possible. When the listening environment is full of loud noises (like a Christmas dinner), a function automatically activates to bring out the voices in a diffuse noise environment, improving speech intelligibility.
These are some examples of technological advances that will help you better understand speech in noisy holiday situations. Note that the functions mentioned are all automatic. However, you can always have customized listening programs added to suit your listening needs. Talk to your audioprosthetist about your technology needs. They will be happy to help you!
Don't forget!
An assessment by an audioprosthetist is required to determine which hearing aid suits the patient's needs.