The Problem With Hearing Aids….

As a hearing aid user, I find that in some environments, I will often find that the level of background noise – general shuffling and coughing – can be as loud as the speaker’s voice, and amplified sound, such as television, can sound distant and unclear. This problem is usually accentuated by poor room acoustics. It is difficult for hearing people to appreciate the problem.

The human ear seems to be capable of filtering out many unwanted sounds, but a hearing aid is unable to do this. Whereas a pair of spectacles can correct sight, hearing aids do not fully correct hearing loss.

In a basic one-to-one situation a hearing impaired person with a correctly fitted hearing aid should be able to make maximum use of their residual hearing using a hearing aid – providing there is not too much background noise and that the speaker stays close by – say within one metre or at arm’s length. Unfortunately, this type of ideal situation is rare.

When someone moves away, the sound pressure level at the hearing aid microphone falls. It is certainly possible to turn up the amplification of the aid and although this will maintain the sound output level from the aid, it will also mean that the level of background and surrounding noise is increased.

Most people have used a voice recorder or dictating machine to record their voices. A comparison would be to put the microphone on the other side of the room. If you did, your voice would sound distant with a lot of background noise. (Why not try it!) Both a hearing aid and a voice recorder have a microphone to ‘feed in’ sound – hence, the comparison between the voice recorder and the hearing aid.

The day that you stop seeing people on TV wearing microphones is the day that you can start looking for a hearing aid which will not benefit from a radio aid system.

The choice of a hearing aid for somebody with a hearing loss is usually made by selecting one from the many types currently available, each one having different characteristics and responses. Hearing aids which suit one person may well be totally unsuitable for another. It is most important that a user feels happy with an aid, and that the hearing aid has been correctly set by the audiologist or dispenser.

A hearing aid has both gain and frequency compensation. The gain counters the level of hearing loss, and the frequency compensation helps to compensate for the type of hearing loss. I use the word ‘help’ intentionally, as help is all the aid can do; it cannot restore hearing.

A hearing aid will perform to the best of its ability when the person talking is within a distance of approximately one metre from the person wearing the hearing aid. In practice, it is realistic to say that the effectiveness of the hearing aid decreases when the distance between the person speaking and the hearing aid user is greater than an arm’s length.