When trying to understand the difference between analog and digital hearing aids, it is important to first appreciate the history of analog versus digital, and the alternative ways that they amplify and process sounds. Analog hearing aids came out first, and were the norm in the majority of hearing aids for many years. Then with the introduction of digital signal processing (DSP) technology, digital hearing aids also started to appear. At this point, most (90%) of the hearing aids sold in the US are digital, although analog hearing aids are still sold because they’re often lower priced, and because some people prefer them.

The way that analog hearing aids operate is that they take sound waves from the microphone in the form of electricity and then amplify them, delivering louder versions of the sound waves to the speakers in your ears “as is.” Digital hearing aids take the sound waves from the microphone and convert them to digital binary code, the “bits and bytes” and “zeros and ones” that all digital devices understand. Once the sound is digitized, the micro-chip inside the hearing aid can manipulate the information in complex ways before transforming it back to analog sound and passing it on to your ears.

Remember that analog and digital hearing aids serve the same purpose – 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 which can be customized to alter sound quality to match the user, and to create different configurations for different environments. For example, there might be distinct settings for low-noise locations like libraries, for noisy restaurants, and for outdoor spaces like stadiums.

Digital hearing aids, because of their capacity to manipulate the sounds in digital form, often have more features and flexibility, and are often user-configurable. For example, digital hearing aids may offer multiple channels and memories, permitting them to store more environment-specific profiles. Other capabilities of digital hearing aids include being able to automatically reduce background noise and remove feedback or whistling, or the ability to prefer the sound of human voices over other sounds.

Cost-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 commonly a noticable difference in sound quality, but the question of whether analog or digital is “better” is up to the individual, and the ways that they are used.