New opportunities for hearing impaired music lovers
Nikolai Bisgaard
VP, External Relations, GN ReSound AS
Hearing aids have come a long way in providing significant improvements in general sound quality as well as signal processing features for optimum sound delivery in view of the hearing loss of the user.
Working under very serious constraints in both size and power supply, highly sophisticated and custom designed DSP systems are used to implement directional microphone systems, noise reduction as well as feedback suppression in order to emphasize the very important speech signals. Some of these processing schemes are not always desirable for music presentation and special set-up must be made available to reach good sound quality on music reproduction. Recently, It has been accomplished to implement wireless connectivity between hearing aids and remote devices including mobile phones. This has started a new era where the utility of hearing aids have been significantly enhanced. An overview of the state of art technology in the field of hearing aids as well as the future perspectives will be given.
