Advanced Hearing Aid Functions Ole Dyrlund The recent generations of advanced analog and digital hearing aids offer a number of interesting signal processing functions, which significantly have increased user satisfaction. A variety of new advanced and even more beneficial functions are expected, when the next digital hearing aid generations are introduced in the coming years. These functions can be split up into the following main groups based on the purpose of the signal processing: (a) Signal processing to compensate for hearing loss of the patient and the acoustic environment (e.g. multiband compression and frequency transposition); (b) Signal processing to improve the function of the hearing aid itself (e.g. feedback suppression and microphone noise reduction); and (c) Signal processing to improve the communication abilities of the patient especially in noisy surroundings (e.g. directional systems, gain reduction based on signal dynamics and active noise canceling) The principles of typical signal processing functions will be outlined and their applications described. The main focus of the presentation will be the clinical implications related to the described of functions. |