What is a hearing aid?

Hearing aids are small electronic devices that amplify and clarify sounds to enable someone with a hearing loss to hear better and participate more fully in life. Hearing aids come in all different shapes and styles that can be worn in or on the ear, but they are all made up of the same basic parts:

	The microphone (or microphones) receives incoming sound from the environment and converts it into digital signal
	The amplifier increases the power of these signals based on the specific hearing aid settings before sending to the speaker
	The speaker turns the digital signals back into sound waves and then sends them to brain to be interpreted
	The battery provides the power to the hearing aid
	The microchip enables more sophisticated features in your hearing aid, e.g distinguishing between speech and noise.

Why Digital?

You may have heard of, or wear, an analogue hearing aid. Analogue hearing aids amplify sound; the trouble is they amplify all sounds equally. That means while you're trying to have conversations with friends in a busy restaurant, the speech you want to hear will still be partially drowned out by the background noise as this will be amplified too.

Digital hearing aids provide much clearer sound quality; they contain a computer microchip, which can be specifically programmed to take into account your individual hearing loss and listening environments to make sure you hear more of the sounds you want to and less of the sounds you don't. Because of their many benefits, at David Ormerod Hearing Centres we only prescribe digital hearing aids.

If you'd like to find out more about digital hearing aids, or even try one for yourself with a free in store demonstration, simply call our Customer Care Team on 0845 072 0992 or request an appointment online.