Call it my ongoing struggle with my own hearing loss, but I find any tech gadgets that help to improve the hearing of people suffering from hearing loss WONDERFUL.
Technological advances over the years have made hearing aids smaller, more fashionable, but rarely have they been made more powerful.
The problem is you can only fit so much power into a hearing aid. It has to take sounds from the outside of your ear, amplify them and then broadcast the sound into your ear so that you can hear them better - without creating an audio feedback loop between the speakers and the microphone inside the hearing aid.
But what if the microphone wasn't inside your ears and only the speakers were there instead?
New hearing aids devices are now on the market wherein the microphone part of the hearing aid is worn around your neck, and the hearing aids contain just the speakers - which means the speakers can be more powerful, smaller (thanks to the lack of a microphone) and even cheaper.
Hearing aids are often uncomfortable and too conspicuous for their owners, but by making them smaller, the device become less powerful.
Another problem with trying to make hearing aids smaller is that they also go way up in price - so you end up getting less quality sound, but paying way more. It just doesn't add up.
Hearing aid manufacturer "Wear" however has chosen to make their products more into decorations which complement a person's appearance, while simultaneously providing higher quality sound at a lower price.
The device itself is a circular disc, available in dark red plastic or a wood and metal finish and worn on a chain around the neck like a necklace. Its stylish design means it can complement outfits and stop wearers from feeling embarrassed by their medical device.
Developed by music producers Michelle Temple and the president of audio and video tech company Creative Technology, Eric Rosenthal, the device is not only an amplifier like many older hearing aids, but is a collection of high-fidelity directional microphones that can be controlled by the user depending on their situation. "Wear" uses analog rather than digital signal processing to avoid the problems involved with audio delays and to take advantage of its abilities with near-field signals: nearer sounds are amplified while others are diminished. Although not designed to completely replace the traditional hearing aid, "Wear" performs better in noisy environments where picking out individual signals is often difficult - this way you could have a conversation in a crowded bar room setting, but without the extra distractions from noisy people at the opposite end of the bar. Users can also simply hold the device towards the person speaking in order to hear them better.
I have similar devices using BlueTooth earbuds and a person's smartphone as the microphone, but such devices are not designed specifically for people who have difficulty hearing - the technology is dumbed down and doesn't have the level of quality in either the sounds being reproduced, nor in the software designed to pick out individual sounds that are closer to you and give them more importance.
Although the current "Wear" model uses 3.5mm headphones, the team hopes to investigate the potential of bone conduction in later versions.
If you live in Vaughan I recommend the Omni Hearing Clinic, which is where I go for all my hearing aids.
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