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 When you spoke to him, he would see you speak and
put his finger up to one of the ear plugs and twist it, and loud
whistling sounds would come out and scare you, but he didn’t seem to
notice the loud screeching whistle. Then he would look at you and
you would speak to him again, and it was clear, grandpa couldn’t
hear what you were saying even with that huge apparatus hanging on
him.
Hearing aids have come a long way since grandpa’s day. With advances
in circuitry and computer optimized technology, the quality and
capability of today's hearing aids, they really shouldn’t be called
hearing aids at all. More accurately and cooler sounding, they can
be called “hearing tech.” They are designed to do so much more than
merely aid your hearing, and engineers are only getting started with
what they might be able to do in the future.
First of all, the size of the devices has changed dramatically. Most
hearing aids are either hidden completely in the ear canal or tiny
and barely discernible, hidden on top of your ear with a tiny clear
tube leading into your ear, usually colored like your skin tone.
Since they are so hidden, they don’t make you feel conspicuous and
freakish, indicating to everyone who sees you that you have a
deficiency. Wearing a hearing aid today will help you appear and
seem more like normal.
The technology has changed completely. Grandpa’s hearing aid was an
analog box that was just designed to just make everything louder by
amplification. It whistled because there was often feedback from the
microphone on the box around his neck coming too close to the
speakers in his ears. It had only one channel. And grandpa’s hearing
aid only had one control for each ear, a tiny screw that he could
turn with the tip of his finger to make it louder or quieter. The
output in grandpa’s ear was at times tinny, other times scratchy and
often filled with static.
Today’s hearing aid is actually a digital computer, with a tiny
digital signal processor inside the tiny hearing aid. It produces
crystal clear sound without sounding tinny, without interference or
whistling, and is controllable on as many as 96 different frequency
channels. This enables the hearing aid to be tuned specifically to
correct your individual hearing deficits. But there is more to
today’s hearing aid than just amplifying individual frequency
channels.
Many people have difficulty hearing when there is background noise.
Today’s digital hearing aids can be tuned to block out background
noise so that you can concentrate on the conversation with the
person right in front of you and hear them perfectly. This in itself
is a great blessing. The people you love the most will be able to be
heard in just about any context. And you can hear them speak without
them having to be directly in front of you where you can see their
lips move.
Another thing that today’s digital hearing aids do is to provide
technology to deal with the disturbing, continuous influence of
tinnitus. Tinnitus is a whistling or humming sound in your ear which
goes on day and night, often leaving the tinnitus sufferer feeling
exhausted and easily annoyed. Many who wear today’s hearing aids
find that their tinnitus is either significantly reduced or gone
completely. And now some hearing aid manufacturers have included
specific noise-cancelling tuning that the tinnitus sufferer can use
to actually cancel out any remaining tinnitus. The result is that
you feel more rested, more energetic, and more cheerful because the
constant annoyance is gone. With today’s
hearing technology, the result is that you can hear like a normal
hearing person. You can clearly hear the people who are speaking to
you. You can clearly hear your own voice and hear that all these
years you have been speaking much too loudly. You can hear the
television set without the volume being turned up too far for others
to be in the room. You can even hear your own knees creaking (a
feature included at no additional cost).
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In addition to being tunable to clearly hear each
frequency range, there are some manufacturers who have models of
today’s hearing tech which allow your hearing aid to be controlled
from an app on your cell phone. You can mute your hearing aids, turn
the volume up or down, and even have them programmed for certain
contexts where the background sound is high, where you want to hear
nature’s sounds, etc. The smartphone app allows you to have the
control in your hand and on your person at all times.
And some manufacturers have taken hearing technology even farther,
integrating your hearing aids into the Bluetooth channels of your
smartphone. This allows you to listen to music directly from your
smartphone, with crystal clear sound on your hearing aids, and even
have phone conversations with others over your hearing aids. No
separate microphone is needed because the hearing tech uses the
microphone built into your hearing aid.
Many people put off getting hearing aids for a number of personal
reasons, but today’s hearing aids do not alter your appearance or
call attention to your hearing deficit. Today’s hearing aids cure
more issues than just hearing deficits, allowing you to hear well no
matter where you are. Today’s hearing aids are a gift to you and to
the people you love because they allow your conversations and your
relationships to function on a normal hearing level.
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