DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

Our Hearing Aids combine state-of-the-art electronics and acoustics to produce the finest quality and affordable hearing instruments available.

There are four basic types of hearing instruments designed to meet most hearing needs. Each help with mild to moderate losses, but if loss is more severe, choices are more limited. While size is the most obvious difference, each style has different attributes that are important to consider.

Hearing instruments worn behind-the-ear (BTE) or in-the-ear (ITE) can carry more sophisticated technology and more powerful amplifiers; they are also more durable. In contrast, new smaller models (CIC) reside closer to the eardrum, and that proximity to the inner ear can help deliver a more natural sound quality. Your hearing professional will provide you with a recommendation based on your specific needs and physiology.

Conventional Hearing Instruments:
These hearing instruments use basic analog technology to provide linear-type amplification, and can be used for patients with a wide range of hearing loss. These instruments perform best in quiet listening environments where noise and distractions can be kept to a minimum. Conventional hearing instruments can be a good choice when price is a significant concern.

Advanced Technology Hearing Instruments:
Recent advances in computers and electronics have resulted in hearing instruments that allow the user greater range of control and options. By utilizing advanced circuitry and computers to program the hearing instruments specifically for an individuals hearing loss, these instruments are able to provide a more natural and balanced sound quality, while also providing a greater listening range as compared to the conventional technology hearing instruments. These instruments still utilize analog technology but can have multiple listening programs accessible to the user for quiet and noisy listening situations and can use an automatic volume control.

Digital Hearing Instruments:
The introduction of digital signal processors in hearing instruments is the most recent and exciting advancement in the hearing healthcare profession. This technology is revolutionary because a miniature computer is housed in each digital hearing instrument, which enables the instrument to be custom programmed and adjusted by the audiologist for your lifestyle and listening demands. These hearing instruments automatically detect changes in sounds in the environment and will make adjustments millions of times each second to the amplification to compensate for those changes to maximize listening ability. The improvement in sound quality with digital as compared to analog is demonstrated by listening to a compact disc (digital) and comparing that same musical performance to a record (analog), just one listen and you will appreciate the benefits of digital with its clearer higher fidelity sound.

Digital vs. Analog
Digital vs. analog refers to how the instrument processes the incoming signal. If an instrument does not process the signal digitally, then it is an analog instrument.

An analog hearing instrument can be either non-programmable (potentiometers) or programmable (computer adjusted)..

A digital hearing instrument can be either non-programmable or programmable .