Any deafness congenital or acquired mild to severe which cannot be corrected by surgery should be treated with hearing aid. Profound sensory neural or mixed deafness are treated with cochlear implants. Hearing aids are basically analog or digital type. An analog hearing aid has following components - A microphone to receive sound energy. It converts sound energy to electrical signals. An amplifier circuit amplifies the electric current.
A loudspeaker converts the electric current back to sound energy. The sound is fed via a tube or ear phones to the external auditory canal. In a digital hearing aid , there is a processor which convert the sound energy into digital electric signals i.e. 1 or 0. The digital data is then reconverted to sound energy. Advantages of digital technology - The sound signal converted to digital data and then reconverted to sound causes exact replica of the…
