Helping you be part of the conversation
Features that help you recognise and make sense of what people say, even in background noise or at a distance.
Examples of what this can help you with:
– Participate in social events
– Communicate effectively with family and other people
– Follow a conversation when there is background noise around you
| Expand each section to learn more about the hearing aid feature in detail |
Directional Microphones
Part of a hearing aid that picks up sound from a given direction, often from in front of you. The microphone can focus on the voices and sounds you want to hear from the direction you want.
Directional Microphones in detail
Automatic directional microphones automatically switch between hearing aid microphone directionality modes depending on the surrounding noise level. For example, switching from picking up sounds from all directions (omnidirectional setting) to picking up sound mostly from a specific direction (directional setting) based on background noise level. This is typically used to focus on sounds from in front of the wearer to reduce the amount of background noise.
Adaptive directional microphones can automatically change or steer the microphone sensitivity in different directions to adapt to changes in direction of speech or interfering noise. For example, it can change from picking up sounds from all directions (omnidirectional) to picking up sound mostly from a specific direction (directional). This feature not only switches between microphone directionality mode (i.e. omnidirectional and directional settings), but also adjusts the hearing aid setting based on the sound field (e.g. may adjust or steer microphone based on background noise level, speech detection, location of talkers/noises, etc).
Binaural directionality – Super directional microphone or Binaural beamformer uses a powerful combined directional pattern from left and right hearing aid microphones to narrowly focus on sounds in front of the wearer such as speech.
Binaural directionality – Better-ear effect is a type of Binaural Directionality that emphasizes sounds on the better ear when there is more noise detected in one ear compared to the other.
Intended Purpose:
Speech Understanding
Reduced Listening Effort
 | Look out for these words: Adaptive directional microphone, Adaptive noise reduction, Automatic directional microphones, Binaural directionality. |
Remote Wireless Microphones
Devices that pick up and send sound directly to your hearing aid. They improve the volume, clarity and quality of speech. Often used when there is background noise or speech coming from a distance.
Remote Wireless Microphones in detail
FM systems use frequency modulation (‘FM’) and radio waves to transmit audio signals directly to hearing aids from an external microphone or audio source. An FM system helps people hear better in noisy listening situations or when the talker is at a distance.
Table and remote microphones are microphones that use wireless technologies such as Bluetooth to transmit sound directly to hearing aids in group settings such as meetings or in noisy environments. These microphones can help the hearing aid wearer focus on the person speaking for improved speech understanding by transmitting the signal directly to the hearing aid.
Intended Purpose:
Speech Understanding
Reduced Listening Effort
Audibility
CROS/BiCROS capability refers to hearing aids that are specifically designed for unilateral deafness, or hearing loss is in one ear. In both a CROS and BiCROS system a device is worn on the poorer ear which transmits sound to a device worn on the better ear. This allows the better ear to access sounds arriving at both sides of the head. A CROS system is used when the better ear does not have significant hearing loss and does not need aiding, while a BiCROS system provides amplification to both ears (i.e. when the better ear is determined to have an aidable hearing loss.
Intended Purpose:
Speech Understanding
Audibility
| Look out for these words: Adaptive directional microphone, Adaptive noise reduction, Automatic directional microphones, Binaural directionality, CROS/BiCROS. |
Gain and Compression
Gain makes all sounds louder. Compression increases the volume of soft sounds while not making louder sounds uncomfortable. This makes it easier to hear quiet sounds and speech.
Gain and Compression in detail
Bands or Channels generally refer to the number of independently operating frequency bands the hearing aid has. These are distinct from the frequency bands that can be adjusted by the audiologist to meet the fitting target/prescription of the wearer.
Wide Dynamic Range Compression is a feature used to make soft sounds louder and prevent loud sounds from being uncomfortably loud. In effect, this expands the range of sounds that are audible and ultimately helps the wearer hear softer sounds such as soft speech that they would otherwise not hear.
Intended Purpose:
Speech Understanding
Audibility
Comfort
| Look out for these words: Amplification, Prescribed gain, Dynamic Range compression, Wide Dynamic Range Compression, Multichannel compression, and Compression limiting. |
Noise Reduction
Features that reduce noise to improve listening comfort and make it easier to hear the sounds you want to hear.
Noise Reduction in detail
Adaptive noise reduction attempts to reduce bothersome background sounds while preserving speech understanding. These technologies differentiate which parts of a sound is primarily speech and which is primarily noise, and this information is used to enhance the speech signal above the noise.
Intended Purpose:
Speech Understanding
Reduced Listening Effort
Comfort
Low-level expansion or soft noise reduction reduces quiet noises that the wearer may find annoying (such as environmental noise or microphone noise) while preserving the amplification of the sounds they do want to hear.
Intended Purpose:
Comfort
Reverberation reduction uses signal processing methods to detect and lower the level of echoes in large rooms and halls. Reverberation reduction may improve speech understanding and reduce listening effort.
Intended Purpose:
Speech Understanding
Reduced Listening Effort
Comfort
Feedback prevention technology addresses high-frequency whistling (feedback), which occurs when the sounds hearing aids generate in the ear canal leaks out of the ear canal back to the microphone. Feedback cancelling systems minimise the problem of feedback by detecting the problem sounds and subtracting them from the microphone input.
Transient noise reduction reduces the discomfort of loud temporary noises while preserving speech signals. As sound is processed by the hearing aid, any sudden loud noises are reduced, making them more comfortable to the wearer
Wind reduction features address wind noise, which can be loud and irritating to a hearing aid wearer. Wind reduction features use signal processing methods to reduce the loudness of wind noise to the wearer and improves comfort.
Intended Purpose:
Comfort
| Look out for these words: Digital noise reduction, Noise reduction algorithms, Noise cancellation technology. |
Artificial Intelligence
Uses smart computing to help find settings or solutions you like. It can also help make decisions about your hearing aids for you. Uses information such as sounds in your environment or past settings choices.
Artificial Intelligence in detail
Wearer preference-based predictions & adjustments: Technologies that determine wearer’s preferences based on their behaviour in different listening situations, extrapolate these preferences by comparing them to other or past users’ preferences, and then make automatic adjustments based on these observations to optimise sound. For example, perhaps the wearer increases the volume and switches to a directional microphone whenever they are seated at a café, then AI will learn to increase the volume and change to directional microphone automatically when in the cafe.
Some of these implementations rely on active training sessions via an app, while others automatically train the device from data obtained during normal usage.
Acoustic scene and sound environment classifiers analyse the incoming sounds in a particular location and automatically makes decisions about what kind of listening environment they are likely to come from or what kind of listening activity the wearer is likely to be participating in. Hearing instruments can use this information to decide what sound to present to the wearer through adjustments to their hearing aid settings such as the amount of amplification, the use of noise management programs, and the microphone directionality settings.
Intended Purpose:
Personalisation
Speech Understanding
Sound Quality
Comfort
Audibility
| Look out for these words: Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Neural networks, Deep learning. |
