Compare Digital and Analog Hearing Aids
The terms "analog" and "digital" essentially refer to how a hearing instrument's amplifier processes sound.
Digital and programmable analog devices are available in all styles, including CIC.
Analog Hearing Aids
Analog hearing aids amplify sound by making the continuous sound wave larger. There are two types of analog
hearing aids:
Conventional Analog Hearing Aid specifications are prescribed by the hearing care
professional and built into the hearing aid by the manufacturer. Fine tuning can be done manually in the
office or at the hearing aid factory, but the hearing care professional is limited in the amount and degree
of adjustments that can be made.
Programmable Analog Hearing Aids can be adjusted or modified in our office using a computer
instead of factory or manual adjustment. This approach can offer a greater degree of flexibility in adjusting
the hearing aid. These devices cost more than analog aids and sometimes have the added feature of a remote
control or multiple response programs for use in different listening environments.
Digital Hearing Aids
Digital hearing aids take the continuous sound wave and break it up into tiny pieces of information. This
process is called "digitizing" the signal and it allows the hearing aid manufacturer to write specialized
computer programs that allow your hearing care professional to customize your hearing aid to your unique
listening needs.
Advantages of digital technology include greater precision in adjusting characteristics and more complex
sound processing. Digital instruments can have special features to help the user such as dual microphones
and low battery warning signals. Loudness adjustments are made automatically. The more sophisticated digital
hearing instruments are able to amplify the softest sounds of speech while at the same time subtracting out
certain types of unwanted noises. These hi-tech systems may be used with a wide range of hearing loss.
Although they are the most expensive hearing aids on the market today, due to their sophistication and
benefits, they represent the highest percentage of hearing aids sold.
CROS & BiCROS Aids
CROS (Contralateral Routing of Signal) and BiCROS hearing aids may be useful for patients who have useable
hearing in only one ear. A hearing aid is worn in each ear. Sound from the hearing impaired ear is transmitted
to the better hearing ear, allowing the patient to hear sounds presented to the impaired side. BiCROS hearing
aids are suited when the better ear also needs some amplification. These devices may be helpful in small
meetings or dinner-table situations.
Do You Need One Hearing Aid or Two?
A major problem faced by people with hearing loss is understanding conversation in the presence of background
noise or when more than one person is speaking-such as at social gatherings, restaurants and auditoriums.
Hearing loss makes understanding speech even more difficult than normal in background noise or in rooms with
poor acoustics.
Modern hearing aids are wonderful devices, but they do not fully resolve this problem. If you have a hearing
loss in both ears, it is important that you wear an aid in each ear. This will maximize your ability to
understand because speech intelligibility in noise depends on the ability to localize sound. When wearing
only one hearing instrument, it becomes difficult to identify the direction or source of a sound.
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