What should musicians look for in a hearing aid?

First, why would musicians and music lovers need to consider special features for music? Well, the answer is that most hearing aids are optimized for speech.

Music and speech present hearing aids with different problems to solve. Speech tends to change rapidly and is often accompanied by background noise such as when sitting in a restaurant or at a family gathering. In this situation the hearing aid wants to maximize speech while minimizing other sounds that might interfere. This is often done via noise reduction algorithms and compression, which reduce much of the unwanted background noise. However, these same features can distort music.

Another common feature is the feedback manager, which prevents whistling sounds from the hearing aid. When feedback occurs the hearing aid generates the same tone, but opposite in phase, which cancels out any annoying whistling. However, sometimes this feature can mistake certain musical tones for feedback and try to cancel them out, leading to distortion.

Many hearing aids have a dedicated music program which reduce or shut down some of these features. This allows more of the signal to preserved, which is very important for hearing all the complex sounds associated with music. Depending on the model, the music program can be accessed manualy or automatically when the hearing aid detects music.

So if you are a musician or simply a lover of music, you want to be sure to look for a hearing aid with a dedicated music program.

Ask the professionals at Accurate Hearing what device is right for you.

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