Asking How Do Hearing Aids Work May Offer Surprising Answers
Asking How Do Hearing Aids Work May Offer Surprising Answers
For many people with hearing problems, being afraid to ask how do hearing aids work is keeping them understanding the newer technology and shutting them off from the many sounds around them. When hearing problems first began becoming obvious, simple amplification cones were held to the ear into which people would talk, effectively channeling their voices into the ear, enabling someone with hearing difficulties to hear them.
It was not long until small amplifiers with a miniature speaker was developed to enable hearing-impaired people to hear through analog amplification. The problem with these early aids were the separate battery pack and bulky earpieces did not provide true hearing quality. Better understanding of how do hearing aids work advanced them to the desk-top level which incorporated a hearing aid into a person's desk with plugs for earphones and a microphone. This eliminated a lot of the noise from the earlier microphones, such as the noise from brushing against their clothing, but they were not portable.
Additional innovations provided microphones that could be placed outside the clothing, but unless they were at the level of the person doing the talking often rendered unintelligible sounds. Turning up the volume also increased the volume of background noise and with the knowledge of how do hearing aids work, many people shunned them.
Digital Processing Enables Noise Filtering
As digital sound processing technology matured, it put a new meaning to how do hearing aids work, as they offered the capable to allow certain frequencies to be amplified while blocking out other frequencies not relevant to the listener's surroundings. There are many people who can hear, but their ability to understand what they hear is hindered by background noise. Evolving digital technology enables hearing aid manufacturers to offer filters for the background noise while allowing normal conversation to pass through.
Today's family of hearing aids are also smaller and designed to fit in the ear, behind the ear or completely inside the ear without the need for the pesky microphone that could pick up unwanted sounds. Knowing how do hearing aids work on background noise enables technicians to block the unwanted noise so it is not amplified along with normal conversational sounds.
It takes specialized training to understand how do hearing aids work, especially for people to be able to hear what is considered important background noises such as car horns or emergency sirens. If those sounds are blocked out it could place the user into dangerous situations.