Soundability

Population aging is inevitable. Demographic data shows that the age distribution of the population is a lot more uniform than 60 years ago. At that time, the proportion of people age 15 to 19 was at least 300% greater than that of people age 75 and over. Nowadays, it’s the complete opposite, and elderly people are now more numerous. Population aging brings with it an increase in the number of people with hearing loss, an increase in the number of people who wear hearing aids, and higher expectations regarding hearing aid functionalities and performance.

Only five years ago, conferences attended by hearing health professionals focused on topics like improving speech intelligibility in complex listening situations, tools to manage the perception of tinnitus, hearing aid users’ listening preferences, and the cognitive aspects of auditory rehabilitation.

More recently, the emphasis has been on auditory degeneration and cognitive plasticity in adults, noise as a hearing loss trigger and an obstacle for hearing-impaired people, and technologies for listening in real environments.

Now, I would like to talk about a brand new concept you will hear more and more about: Soundability™. This term refers to the balance between sound quality and audible sound accessibility, based on users’ individual preferences. Hearing aids designed with this feature in mind and equipped with directional microphones with binaxFocus technology have a good listening quality in noise. Thanks to e2e 3.0 wireless technology, the directional microphones of hearing aids compare the sound captured to simulate a high definition virtual network with eight microphones—all without noticeably increasing battery consumption.

The superior sound quality of binax hearing aids offers multidimensional sound richness when listening to music, even when hearing aids are programmed for speech. People who like to stay up on the latest technology trends and want to be able to adjust their hearing aids to their preferences when listening to music can upload apps such as miniTek app, easyTek app, and TouchControl app (available for Android and iOS systems).

The future of hearing aid technology will surely be all about improving sound quality, speech understanding, and sound processing in different life situations.