Today’s hearing aids come with a lot of high-tech features. Some are worth the extra expense, but others might be optional.

Many of these new hearing aids have artificial intelligence that analyzes your environment, the sounds around you and your hearing loss, then adjusts to help you hear more naturally. Some even use motion sensors to help you process sound directionality.

Telecoil

Telecoil technology is found on many hearing aids, including those that fit entirely inside the ear canal. However, smaller models, such as those used for hearing aids that sit behind the ear, omit telecoils.

This wireless technology can help reduce background noises in specific environments and notable public venues. Moreover, it may improve speech understanding in people with hearing loss.

This technology can also help in telephone calls since it picks up the electromagnetic signals from a phone’s speaker and transmits them directly to a hearing aid receiver. Often, this will be more effective than listening through a hearing aid’s microphones alone.

The only drawback of telecoil technology is the occasional interference that can occur. This is typically due to fluorescent lights in the room or other equipment like computers that emit interference signals.

Another disadvantage of telecoil technology is that it does not work well with the music. The piece generally comprises higher frequencies that a telecoil cannot pick up.

Fortunately, other forms of hearing assistance are available that use digital wireless technology. This technology offers many advantages over telecoil, but it can be challenging to pair with different accessories, and there are no common standards for transmission in large public venues.

Directional Microphone Adaptability

Many new options and features regarding hearing aid technology can help you hear better. One of the latest is directional microphone adaptability, which can improve speech understanding in noisy environments.

This feature allows your hearing aid to adjust its microphones and noise filtering automatically as you move around different listening situations. It works by using two or more microphones that are separated by distance.

These microphones can be adjusted manually (via a switch or remote control) or automatically based on signal-processing decisions designed for the listening environment. These options are known as fixed directional or adaptive directional.

Another option is a directional microphone array, which lets your hearing aid pick up sounds from specific points in space. A “simple” version focuses on grabbing sound from the front of the hearing aid. At the same time, a “fully adaptive” directional microphone array uses your hearing aid’s microphone system to highlight speech and follow it around the room.

This can help you understand conversation in noisy environments and reduce background noise. You’ll also get a more realistic audio experience, with sound being pulled closer to your ears and noises pushed out of the way.

AutoSense

The latest hearing aid technology has the power to change the way you experience sound. Autosense is an innovative, industry-first hearing aid operating system that recognizes and automatically adapts to different listening situations.

When wearing a hearing aid, your hearing instrument automatically adapts to the sounds around you, providing exceptional speech intelligibility in all environments. It utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to constantly monitor the acoustic environment, adjusting the compression speed accordingly.

This process results in an ideal profile of good attributes closely matching the wearer’s defined perfect hearing profile and ensuring speech clarity and music quality. The new AutoSense OS 3.0 is enhanced to classify different sound environments precisely based on dual path compression, vent loss compensation, and a first-fit algorithm.

It is also the world’s first hearing aid to classify streamed signals, ensuring your listening experience is optimized for any environment. Bluetooth enables you to connect your hearing aids to your phone, TV, or other audio devices and stream your favorite music, podcasts, or phone calls directly through the hearing aids. You can check Phonak hearing aids review to learn more about this technology.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a wireless connection protocol that allows your devices to talk to each other without any wires or cords. It powers much of our tech today, including headphones, TVs, laptops and cars.

The latest hearing aid technology includes bluetooth capabilities, which allow you to stream music, phone calls and more directly from your hearing aids. This makes your listening experience more seamless and enables your hearing aids to double as highly personalized, custom audio devices.

Using Bluetooth to connect to your hearing aids can improve the sound quality of audio signals and reduce interference by eliminating the microphone from receiving feedback or other noise. It also allows your hearing aids to automatically adjust their volume and program settings when you are near another bluetooth device.

This Bluetooth-enabled technology is becoming more popular as it helps people with hearing loss to adapt to their changing environment and expand their listening preferences over time. However, it is essential to note that not all Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids offer the same level of support and functionality.

If you want to learn more about the latest hearing aid technology and how it can benefit your life, contact us to schedule a free hearing test and consultation. Our experienced staff can walk you through all the options and help you choose the right hearing aid.