How Hearing Aids are Programmed

Programming is an important component of your hearing device, no matter what your degree of hearing loss. How your hearing aid is programmed depends on your degree of hearing loss, comfort level and other personal considerations. You can’t simply purchase a set of hearing aids from a retailer without having them programmed to your specification. Just like glasses without the lenses, a hearing aid won’t do you any good without programming by a certified audiologist. This is crucial because your hearing aid needs to conform to your ears and your existing hearing capabilities.

What Factors can be Adjusted?

An audiologist is skilled in adjusting elements such as volume, frequency, intensity levels, compression ratios, max power output, noise reduction, microphone parameters and the like. Many factors are involved when programming a hearing aid. Depending on the model type you have, along with the software contained in it. Therefore, if one setting is too sensitive in regards to noise, it can be changed to accommodate the user’s comfort level. Many can be adjusted to filter out certain levels of background noise as well.

Processing Time

You may have to go back a couple of times to get your hearing aid adjusted. Did you know that the brain has to take time to adjust to the new sounds emitted by the device, which can only be determined over time when exposed to different environments? Most people come back to their doctor with suggestions on how the device could work better or complaints about what the device can’t do for them. Most hearing aids manufactured today are digital in nature, as opposed to older devices that could be adjusted with a simple screwdriver. Back then, you got what you got – there weren’t too many adjustments available. Fast forward to today and hundreds of elements can be fine tuned within digital hearing aids to accommodate the hearing needs of an individual. Programming takes place as a result of a complete hearing evaluation with the user on his or her subjective preferences. This trouble shooting approach is what’s so great about digital hearing aids.

Programming Hearing Aids

During the actual programming process, many doctors use a surround sound system to simulate real noise from the outside world and make adjustments based on real-time feedback. This surround sound system can simulate crowd noises to determine how they will go about noise reduction. This is a helpful feature because so many people with hearing aids say they work great when all is quiet but as soon as they are in a restaurant, or even at a train station, they have to work hard to compete with all that background noise. Through real ear measurements, visual mapping and environmental simulations, a hearing aid can be customized to the individual user. Real-ear probe microphones can detect how much sound is reaching the eardrum so the doctor can be the most accurate in his programming. Visible speech mapping (VSM) tells the doctor how various sounds of speech hit the eardrum. This is a great alternative to traditional measurements because today’s hearing aids can now help with noise reduction and feedback reduction algorithms. The process of programming a hearing aid requires the proper hardware, software and cables to connect to the hearing aid. Many people learn to program their own hearing aids but the equipment can get expensive and the level of accuracy goes down. However, a word of caution: have a qualified audiologist perform this important task for the ultimate in hearing health.