Any Suggestions for Dealing with Difficult Listening Situations, Such as “Background Noise”?
Virtually all patients wearing hearing aids complain about background noise at one time or another. There is no way to completely eliminate background noise. Remember, when you had normal hearing there were times when background noise was a problem. It is no different now, even with properly fit hearing aids! The good news is there are circuits and features that help to reduce (or minimize) background noise and other unwanted sounds. In fact, there are research findings that clearly show that digital hearing aids with particular circuits, FM options, and directional microphones can effectively reduce background noises. Please speak with your audiologist about this. Many early digitally programmable (and even some digital) circuits, which claimed to reduce or eliminate background noise, actually filtered out low frequency sounds. This indeed made the sounds appear quieter, however, not only was the background noise made quieter, but so too, was the speech sound. Newer ways to reduce bac
