The document explains the differences between analog and digital hearing aids, detailing their history and functionality. While analog aids amplify sound directly, digital aids convert sound waves into binary code for sophisticated processing before amplifying them. Digital hearing aids typically offer more features, programmability, and flexibility, although analog aids remain less expensive and some users may prefer them.

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An Introduction to Analog vs. Digital Hearing Aids
A little bit of history and an explanation of how analog devices work versus how
digital devices work is necessary to understand the differences between analog and
digital hearing aids. Historically, analog technology appeared first, and consequently
the majority of hearing aids were analog until digital signal processing (DSP) was
developed, at which point digital hearing aids appeared. The majority of (roughly
90%) hearing aids sold in the US today are digital, although you can still get analog
hearing aids because some people prefer them, and they are often less expensive.
Analog hearing aids handle incoming
sounds by taking the electrical sound
waves as they emerge from a
microphone and amplifying them “as is”
before sending the sound waves to the
speakers in your ears. On the other
hand, digital hearing aids take the same
sound waves from the microphone, but
before amplifying them they turn them
into the binary code of ones and zeros
that all digital devices use. After the
sound has been digitized, the micro-chip
within the hearing aid can process and manipulate the data in sophisticated ways
before transforming it back to analog sound and delivering it to your ears.
Remember that both analog and digital hearing aids have the same function – they
take sounds and boost them so that you can hear them better. Both analog and
digital hearing aids can be programmable, which means that they contain
microchips that can be customized to adjust sound quality to match the user, and to
develop various settings for different listening environments. The programmable
hearing aids can, for example, have one setting for listening in quiet spaces,
another for listening in noisy restaurants, and still another for use in large stadiums.
Digital hearing aids, due to their capacity to manipulate the sounds in digital form,

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often offer more features and flexibility, and are often user-configurable. For
example, digital hearing aids may offer multiple channels and memories, permitting
them to save more location-specific profiles. Other capabilities of digital hearing aids
include the ability to automatically minimize background noise and eliminate
feedback or whistling, or the ability to prefer the sound of voices to other sounds.
Price-wise, most analog hearing aids are still less expensive than digital hearing
aids, but some reduced-feature digital hearing aids are now in a similar general
price range. There is often a perceivable difference in sound quality, but the
question of whether analog or digital is “better” is entirely up to the individual, and
the ways that they are used.