Dealing with hearing loss throughout the holiday season can be particularly difficult.
While you may actually prefer to NOT hear a few of your relatives, the discussions you do wish to indulge in can be stressful. And because nearly all large holiday gatherings tend to be loud, it can be nearly impossible to focus on any one person or dialogue.
If you wish to participate in conversation, you have to cope with background music, people talking simultaneously around the table, and the Thanksgiving football game blaring in the background. This produces an impossible situation that can make you feel detached and left out.
Short of making everyone repeat themselves or remaining silent, what are your choices?
Truthfully, 10 years ago you didn’t have many. Older analog hearing aids could amplify speech—the trouble was that they also amplified everything else, including background noise. Given that all sound was just made to be louder, it didn’t help a great deal with understanding the person you were in conversation with.
But hearing aids have changed, and for the better. In particular, contemporary hearing aids have two functions that can salvage your holiday season: background noise reduction and speech focus.
Background noise reduction
Older analog hearing aid models were in truth very simple devices. They contained a microphone, an amplifier, and a speaker. Sound was detected by the microphone, amplified, and sent through the speaker to the ear.
The drawback was, of course, that the hearing aid couldn’t differentiate between vocalization and background sound. The amplifier made every sound louder, so unless you were in a tranquil setting, you had a difficult time hearing voices.
Since holiday gatherings are anything but quiet, what you necessarily need is a hearing aid that can differentiate between sounds—which is precisely what modern digital hearing aids can accomplish.
Digital hearing aids, besides containing a microphone, amplifier, and speaker, also feature a digital processor. That means sound can be translated into digital information that the hearing aid can make use of to differentiate between various kinds of sounds.
By differentiating and tagging different kinds of sounds, modern hearing aids can be programmed to amplify only sounds with specific attributes, such as all of the frequencies you have difficulty hearing. Background sounds, on the other hand, can be conveniently identified and suppressed.
Speech focus
In addition to suppressing background sound, contemporary hearing aids can also recognize and concentrate on speech.
Speech has a special characteristic in that it is made up of primarily of high-frequency sounds. This makes it easy for the digital processor to distinguish between speech and background noise, which is predominantly low frequency.
In addition, digital hearing aids have what are known as directional microphones, which can detect the direction of sound. Some hearing aid models can even focus the microphones in specific directions, like the direction of the person you’re talking to.
Schedule Your Hearing Test and Appreciate the Holidays Again
Are you ready to reclaim your holiday season?
Give us a call today and we’ll help you choose among the extraordinary digital hearing aid technology on the market. Then, with your new hearing aids—outfitted with background noise suppression and speech focus—you’ll be able to hear all of the conversations with comfort and clarity.
As for the relatives you don’t want to hear? Not to worry, the hearing aids also come equipped with an off button.