(Newswire.net — May 26, 2019) — Hearing problems are more common than we expect. According to NIDCD, 25 percent of people between the ages of 60 to 75 suffer from some kind of hearing problem. This number goes up to 50 percent among people who are over 75 years of age. This means you’re going to need a hearing aid at some point in time in your life.
When you’re ready to shop for the perfect hearing aid, here are some features to look for.
Channels
Channels are filters that can cover the varying frequencies of sound. These channels help your hearing aid to analyze and reproduce those sounds, so you can hear them.
The number of channels on your hearing aid depends to a large extent on your hearing needs. More channels don’t always mean better. In general, if your hearing loss is more complex, you need more channels. On the other hand, if you’re hearing loss is fairly mild, just a couple of channels would do.
Feedback suppression
Feedback is often a problem because the speakers of the hearing aid are located close to your ear canal. It feels like almost standing next to an amplifier that’s blaring a loud song. This is why all hearing aids come with feedback suppression to ensure that the sounds do not irritate you or is painful in any way.
It is always a good idea to go for hearing aids with advanced feedback suppression systems to ensure that the loud noises in your environment don’t impact you greatly.
Directionality
This feature gives more preference to sounds coming from your front. This feature is particularly important when you want to have a conversation with someone in a noisy environment because it reduces the sounds coming from the surrounding areas. Needless to say, this feature enhances conversation as you can hear and understand better.
Wind noise
Have you ever had the chance to speak or listen to someone when it is windy? If so, you’d know how distorted the sounds can be. Well, the same applies to your hearing aid as well. So, your hearing aid should have a wind noise reduction feature to make it easy for you to listen in on sounds and to have a conversation, especially if you tend to spend a good amount of time outdoors.
Direct audio output
This option allows you to connect your computer or TV directly to your hearing aid through a Bluetooth connection. Some hearing aids even allow you to even adjust volume controls on your TV directly through your aid.
Type of hearing aid
There are two broad types of hearing aids, namely analog and digital. Analog hearing aids take the existing sounds and make them really loud. Digital hearing aids, on the other hand, take sound waves from the air and interpret them into a digital format that in turn, can be customized to meet your hearing needs.
Needless to say, digital hearing aids are better, but they also tend to be more expensive.
Thus, these are some of the features to keep in mind while shopping for a hearing aid.