The Digital Advantage: Analog Vs. Digital Hearing Aids

You’ve most likely been told that today’s hearing aids are “not your father’s hearing aids,” or that hearing aid technology is light-years ahead of where it used to be, even as recently as 5 to 10 years ago. But what makes today’s technology so much better? And what exactly can modern day hearing aids achieve that couldn’t be accomplished in the past?

The short answer is, like the majority of consumer electronics, hearing aids have benefited greatly from the digital revolution. Hearing aids have emerged as miniaturized computers, with all of the programming adaptability you would expect to see from a modern computer.

But before hearing aids became digital, they were analog. Let’s see if we can figure out why the shift from analog to digital was such an enhancement.

Digital vs analog hearing aids

At the simplest level, all hearing aids work the same way. Each hearing aid includes a microphone, amplifier, speaker, and battery. The microphone picks up sound in the environment, the amplifier strengthens the signal, and the speaker delivers the louder sound to your ear.

Fundamentally, it’s not very complex. Where is does get complex, however, is in the details of how the hearing aids process sound, which digital hearing aids accomplish much differently than their analog alternatives.

Analog hearing aids process sound in a relatively straightforward way. In three basic steps, sound is picked up by the microphone, amplified, and presented to the ear through the speaker. That is… ALL sound is made to be louder, including background noise and the sound frequencies you can already hear properly. Put differently, analog hearing aids amplify even the sounds you don’t want to hear — think of the scratching sound you hear from an analog recording on a vinyl record.

Digital hearing aids, in contrast, apply a fourth step to the processing of sound: transformation of sound waves to digital information. Sound itself is an analog signal, but instead of just making this analog signal louder, digital hearing aids first convert the sound into digital configuration (saved as 0s and 1s) that can then be altered. Digital hearing aids, therefore, can CHANGE the sound before amplification by changing the information saved as a series of 0s and 1s.

If this seems like we’re talking about a computer, we are. Digital hearing aids are effectively miniature computers that run one customized program that manipulates and improves the quality of sound.

Advantages of digital hearing aids

Most today’s hearing aids are digital, and for good reason. Seeing that analog hearing aids can only amplify incoming sound, and cannot alter it, analog hearing aids will usually amplify disruptive background noise, making it frustrating to hear in noisy environments and nearly impossible to talk on the phone.

Digital hearing aids, however, have the flexibility to amplify specific sound frequencies. When sound is converted into a digital signal, the computer chip can detect, label, and store specific frequencies. As an example, the higher frequency speech sounds can be labeled and stored separately from the lower frequency background noise. A hearing specialist can then program the computer chip to amplify only the high frequency speech sounds while suppressing the background noise — making it easy to follow conversations even in noisy environments.

Here are some of the other advantages of digital hearing aids:

• Miniaturized computer technology means smaller, more discreet hearing aids, with some models that fit totally in the ear canal, making them practically undetectable.
• Digital hearing aids tend to have more attractive designs and colors.
• Digital hearing aids can be programmed by a hearing specialist to process sound in various ways depending on the setting. By changing settings, users can achieve ideal hearing for a range of situations, from a quiet room to a noisy restaurant to speaking on the phone.
• Digital hearing aids can be fine-tuned for every patient. Each person hears different sound frequencies at different decibel levels. Digital hearing aids allow the hearing specialist to adjust amplification for each sound frequency based on the characteristics of each person’s distinctive hearing loss.

Try digital hearing aids out for yourself

Reading about digital hearing aids is one thing, trying them out is another. But keep in mind, to get the most out of any set of hearing aids, you require both the technology and the programming proficiency from an experienced, licensed hearing specialist.

And that’s where we come in. We’ve programmed and fine-tuned countless hearing aids for people with all forms of hearing loss, and are more than happy to do the same for you. Give us a call and experience the digital advantage for yourself!