What are the benefits of digital hearing technology over the older analog technology?
Digital hearing technology uses digital signal processing (DSP) to manipulate sounds. In analog hearing technology sounds are simply amplified in prescribed ways. But sounds that are processed digitally can be more finely tuned to the individual’s hearing loss. This allows for better, cleaner sound quality. Digital processing interacts with the environment, determining whether a sound is speech or noise, or loud or soft, in front or in back, etc. Depending on the analysis of the sounds, decisions are made as to how these various sounds are processed – the goal being to preserve speech understanding even in noise, at the same time keeping the listener comfortable.
