Wayne's World

Hearing Aid Battery Life is Not Easy to Predict   The past three weeks this post has been devoted to hearing aid battery life, because those who recommend and fit hearing aids quite often receive complaints from customers about how the battery life doesn’t last as long as they were led to believe.  Last week’s post showed the resultant current drain

Is Your Hearing Aid Battery Lasting as Long as You Think it Should?   As promised last week, this week’s post compares the same hearing aid under conditions of adaptive signal processing features turned “Off,” and then “On” to show what happens to current drain and the expected hearing aid battery life.  As pointed out in the last two articles

Open Earmold Hearing Aid Fittings Open earmold fittings (essentially, ear pieces having a single large vent, multiple vents, or tubing alone), are commonly used today to achieve a successful fit for the hearing-impaired population having high-frequency hearing loss (Figure 1).   How and When Did Open Earmold Fittings Come About? It is unlikely that the person who coined the term,

  Even in Hearing Aids, Echo Sometimes Has the Last Word A recent post reflected on how an echo is created by an acoustic delay, and even touched on mythology as an interesting, but non-scientific, explanation for its existence.  The article suggested that the delay that causes the echo could even have implications for hearing aids.  How can this be?

Hearing Aid Battery Performance Inspired by Bo Derek?   Recent posts on this site provided a paper trail to the origin of the CIC (completely-in-canal) hearing aid.  I was reminded that one component not discussed, but facilitating this movement to small hearing devices, was the hearing aid battery (actually, a cell as it relates to the custom-molded instruments of the

Part II – XP Peritympanic Impact Leading to the CIC Hearing Aid   This post is a continuation of a blog from a couple of weeks ago describing the road to the development of the CIC (completely-in-the-canal) hearing aid. What started as an effort to reduce the occlusion effect for ITC (in-the-canal) style hearing aids, led to the development of a

I am off on holidays this week, but hope you will enjoy this top post from 2015. Sound Localization – Time-of-Arrival Differences at the Ears   Time-of-arrival of sound at the two ears is an important contributor to sound localization. In this continuation of a series on binaural hearing, special attention is given to the second major contributor to sound localization,

From “Going Deep” to the CIC (completely-in-canal) Hearing Aid     Hearing aids are available in a wide variety of sizes, configurations, and styles.  Styles include BTE (behind-the-ear), RIC/RITE (receiver-in-canal/receiver-in-the-ear), thin tube, ITE (in-the-ear), ITC (in-the-canal), CIC (completely-in-canal), IIE (invisible-in-ear), and other variations. While all seem to have their place in the fitting process, it is undeniable that a major driving

An Echo is a Sound Reflection In acoustics, an echo is a sound reflection, arriving at the listener some time after the direct sound.  And, it is said that echo has the last word. We often see a cartoon with a person overlooking a canyon, with a word or phrase yelled and the reflections being returned from the distant canyon

Design Considerations Involved in Going From Analog to Digital Technology     Last week’s post provided background on how the first wearable digital hearing aid was developed.  This post will continue this historical highlight leading to one of the most disruptive developments related to hearing aid technology – the digital hearing aid.  Specifically, this post will discuss the design features/considerations