Here’s why you are struggling to move from analog hearing aids to digital

Analogue and digital hearing aids are very, very different things. Analogue aids use older and simpler technology. If you are a long-term analogue user and you are having problems hearing well with new digital aids then try this:

Ask your audiologist to turn off noise reduction on your digital aids, if they can’t turn it off completely then at least have then reduce it to an absolute minimum.

The problem is that analogue aids amplify all sounds in the same way and as a long-term analogue wearer you are used to this, you are hearing voices nice and loud but doors closing and traffic noise is also loud, but your used to that and it’s fine. When you switch to a digital aid with noise reduction everything is suddenly much quieter, the aid reduces the volume of the closing door and the traffic, which for most people is great, but for you is not – your brain is used to loud. powerful sounds and cannot cope with the new quiet sounds.

If you ask your audiologist to re-programme your digital aids to be more like analogue then you should be able to hear as you did before.

I’m like this, I wore analogue aids for years and I wasted at least six months trying different digital aids and being very frustrated by not being able to her anyone talking with any of them. Turned out that it wasn’t the new aids at all, it was just the my audiologist at the time was using the default programme with full noise-reduction. I still wear digital aids today with very little active noise reduction.

Wean yourself off the noise

It would be very good for you if you gradually increased the noise reduction on your aids over time, to try and train yourself to listen and understand with noise reduction active, you’ll have a much better hearing experience. People say it takes anything from two to six months to do it, I still haven’t!

If you like what you see, share it so others can benefit