Digital hearing aids

Hearing aids have advanced greatly over the last few years in both look and technology with digital hearing aids now almost making the analogue type virtually extinct. There are many different types to choose from and they vary greatly in price with the more advanced ones costing thousands of pounds.

Behind the ear hearing aids

This type will normally sit behind the ear and have an ear mould which fits inside your ear, they are connected by a plastic tube. This is a very common type of hearing aid and the one which is widely used and available on the NHS. For those people who have only very mild hearing loss there is a newer version of the behind the ear hearing aid called an open ear fitting and they use a small earpiece instead of the ear mould.

In the ear hearing aids

This type of hearing aid fits directly in the ear and all the working parts are fitted into it, they vary in size from ones which are visible in the ear to ones which are so small that they fit all the way inside your ear canal and are barely noticeable. However this type isn’t suited to those with very narrow ear canals or those who are profoundly deaf.

How do digital hearing aids work?

The digital hearing aid takes a signal from the microphone and transfers this into data, there is a tiny computer fitted into the digital hearing aid and this computer then translates the data, due to the great advancements in digital hearing aids they can be finely adjusted and are able to process sounds very precisely.

Digital hearing aids have the advantage over analogue ones in that they are able to reduce background noise which can help greatly. The more expensive digital hearing aids will have controls for finer adjustments with different settings for different situations and conditions.

Many of them will actually be able to adjust themselves to conditions without you having to control them at all but of course these are the top of the range models. Some of the more expensive hearing aids also have what is called feedback cancellation; this means that it will reduce the whistling noise that many people complain of hearing.

They also have wide dynamic range compression which means that you can adjust several channels; these channels can be adjusted to your particular hearing loss and ensures that you hear sounds at levels that are comfortable to you. However this type of hearing aid is a more advanced model and you could well expect to pay up to £3,500.