Hearing Aid

Perhaps hearing aids are the first thing that strikes in someone’s head when they are diagnosed to have a significant amount of hearing loss. Hearing aids are small battery powered bio-medical electronic device that are designed to improve the hearing abilities of an individual. They pick up the sounds required for our daily life then process in par with technology they have based on the residual hearing to maximize the access to the acoustic world of an impaired individual. Though hearing aids can’t restore the normal hearing they improve an individual’s hearing by processing and amplifying the sounds. Helping individuals having hearing impairment with the sounds that they had trouble in hearing.

The hearing aids are designed to meet the needs of your lifestyle, if you pick the right one as prescribed by our audiologists and have some patience while adjusting with them.

How Hearing Aid Helps

We at Joy of Hearing provide a variety of hearing aids and accessories which are most suitable for you. We are not bias for any brand rather we fit a large range of brands of hearing aids and accessories which gives an option to choose a best for your lifestyle.

We train our audiologists regularly to keep them updated on recent developments in the audiological field. Thereby providing you the advanced hearing solutions such as 2.4 GHz wireless connectivity, Bluetooth v5 LE, Rechargeable Li ion batteries and Artificial Intelligence to enhance the joy of hearing.

With the advent of modern digital technology hearing hands have undergone continuous augmentation and improvements in last few decades. At their core any hearing aid will consist of

• Microphone/s
• Amplifier
• Receiver
• Printed Circuit Board
• Battery

No matter what style or size, all hearing aids consist of these five components.

Small microphones/s collect a wide variety of sounds from the environment and transduces the sound energy into a form of digital amplifier which is the brain of hearing aid.It analyzes, processes and amplifies based on the hearing loss, listening needs and ambient environment. The amplified sound is sent to receiver where it gets converted back to sound waves and passed through the auditory system.

Types of Hearing Aids

There is different style of Hearing aids available, which can be recommended to various requirement as per the degree of loss and the lifestyle. Below mentioned are different style of hearing aids which provides solutions to variety of needs.

• Behind-The-Ear (BTE): This hearing aid hooks over the pinna and rests behind the ear with all the electronic parts in it.

• Receiver-In-Canal (RIC): Also known as RITE, receiver in the ear, these hearing aids are similar to BTE aids but they are smaller as receiver, a part of hearing aid’s electrical circuit is extended by thin wire to sit inside the ear canal through an instant tip or mechano-acoustic coupler (micro mold).

• In-The-Ear (ITE): ITE are usually smaller than BTEs or RICs sit in the outer portion of the ear canal and/ or concha. Depending on the size of the ear canal and features the ear hearing aid may be relatively discreet
• In-The-Canal (ITC): These are custom molded and sits partly in the ear canal. The size varies with need of manual controls.
• Completely-In-Canal (CIC): Completely-in-canal (CIC) hearing aids are molded to sit completely inside your ear canal so that they remain mostly invisible.
• Invisible (IIC): The IIC's are the smallest possible hearing aid. They enable user to extensively use most of natural cues from outer ear to locate and lateralize the sound. The custom-made shell is made to fit deep into your ear canals, making it virtually invisible.

Advancement and Ergonomy

Our progressive lifestyle has led to development of technology of hearing aids to match our needs. Hearing aids have become smarter and more autonomous. They boost multiple features to help you hearing better in specific challenging locations and provide greater benefits

Ability of hearing aids to determine if input sounds are speech like or not based on envelop of incoming sound. Most of modern day’s hearing aids come with some amount of noise reduction that dampen the background noise. But such conventional strategies might not suffice in current day’s listening needs. Hence manufacturers have developed more aggressive algorithms to reduce effect of noise. Some of expert noise reduction strategies are

• Speech enhancer- not only dampens noise also helps to amplify speech from mixture of speech and background noise
• Noise tracker II provides reduction up to -10dB
• Voice iQ which uses pre-defined algorithm to detect noise
• StereoZoom- actively suppresses noise from the back and the sides.

Two or more microphones are aligned on the hearing aids to improve the ability of hearing aids to detect best possible source of speaker by providing some reduction to sounds from rest directions.
Some of common directional systems are

• Directional Sound Processing and Autoscope
• Adaptive HD Locator
• Dynamic Directionality
• Ultra-Zoom

Current day’s hearing aids have increasingly made possible to connect to various Bluetooth interfaces enabling the user to have a hassle free connectivity to their gadgets such as cellphone*, music players TV which elevates the hearing experience with multimedia platforms, this provides them a better quality noise free access to world of entertainment. There are Bluetooth-enabled smartphones*, TVs, computers, tablets and music systems. You probably have all or many of these devices in your home. Well, Bluetooth comes in hearing aids too. Commonly, there are also capabilities for remotely changing the volume or program from the streamer.

They also provide remote access to control and change the way how their hearing aid behaves, common controls that can be accessed from smartphone are volume control, directionality, programming and some models provides ability to customize hearing aids by virtue of their frequent listening environments. Having a Bluetooth hearing aid might help you connect with your friends, family, colleagues, and the world in greater ways.

Battery consumption was the biggest challenge to hearing aid users in previous days. Increased features demand more battery consumption thereby restricting the range of usage. Today's advanced rechargeable digital hearing aids are capable to serve much longer time than they used to and virtually providing unlimited range of usage without worrying about your hearing aids running out of power.

There are different rechargeable battery technologies each of them having their own advantages and disadvantages. Some rechargeable devices come with an option to switch to regular batteries when needed and some comes with concealed type of Li ion battery. Our audiologists recommend you the best option for you based on your lifestyle.

With the advent of advanced algorithms and open platforms for updates hearing aids have gone a step ahead to take care of dynamic world where you live. Recent hearing aids comes with groundbreaking technology of analyzing incoming sounds which classify them to different sound classes and provide more aggressive acoustic alterations to make you hear sounds in dynamically changing environments. Research have shown that these classification of technology helps hearing aids user to optimally adjust their hearing aids to different environments seamlessly frequent manual adjustments in a similar way how brain analyzes the acoustic scene. Some of the popular algorithms are

• Environmental optimizer
• Soundclass technology
• AutoSense OS

AI is a technology that is designed to solve complex problems with great efficiency and without human intervention. Machines are developed in such a way that they learn from present experience and be adaptive in complex situation when encountered again. They are intelligent today and very smartly autonomous tomorrow. You might have heard of AI car performing auto drive, AI home management, AI in manufacturing industries but had you ever heard of AI in hearing aids? How easy would it be for user if a hearing aid can adapt itself for his dynamic listening requirements without user’s intervention? How great a user would feel if his hearing aids can remember his personal auditory preferences in frequently visited places and turn them on automatically whenever he visits there?

AI has been a breakthrough development in hearing aid industry and has brought an array of possibilities that a hearing aid could do to make your hearing to be like the way your brain controlled before. AI in hearing aids can detect your auditory scene and learn what you want to hear more and focus on. Consider yourself out for a quick bite or a tea party a bustling restaurant with your partner or colleagues, AI can makes your aids to dampen the disturbing background noise and focus on what your mate says without you struggling to adjust the aid and AI enables your aids to remember these settings and turns them on automatically whenever you visit the same location.

AI has revolutionized hearing care by making hearing aids to adapt seamlessly to ever changing acoustic world. Clinical trials have shown that 98% individuals have shown their satisfaction for sound quality and reduced hearing efforts when AI was turned on. Some of the AI enabled technologies are

• Sound Sense Learn
• Edge AI
• Via AI
• AutoSense OS 3.0

Since we are continuously exposed to outer world there are high chances that extreme weather conditions can cause damage to your regular hearing aids. We offer variety of hearing solutions that come with ingress protection in order to enhance the life of your hearing aids . Recent devices comes with IP57 ratings that ensures protection from frequent dust and water splashes without any extra alterations being made to hearing aids.

• Get a check-up from reputed audiologists
• Consider your listening needs with utmost priority – brands, budgets are secondary
• Think about future needs- Your aid must be capable to meet your futuristic needs (if hearing loss increases)
• Check for a warranty- always peer to for extra warranty which comes at a nominal price this ensures you a peace of mind for manufacturing effects post standard warranty.
• Beware of misleading claims- hearing aids can assist you with hearing they can’t restore natural hearing.

We at Joy of Hearing ensure you to get most adept hearing solutions based on these modern era’s digital technologies driven by our expertise. We help you passionately to enjoy Hearing in all environments.