Listening Selectivity Through FM Systems for Hearing Aids

The technology behind hearing aids keeps improving at a fast pace. The devices that would work as simple hearing aids often do not succeed in making listening easier, and certainly not where children are involved. There is one secret to significant improvement, with or without the need of a hearing aid device.

A Tool for Enhanced Selectivity

Even when the hearing sense is perfect, one can have trouble listening, for example, to someone’s voice. There are background noises, echoes or reverberation, and the source of the speech can be located too far away. Difficult listening conditions are a daily occurrence. Count the TV sounds, the playground noise, and so on. The child could not hear the parent or babysitter talking unless they would get very close. Imagine a child dealing with all these. His attention would go to the closer sounds, thus missing the information. With the new technology, separation is possible: speech is identified and enhanced, so that it gets all the needed attention.

Modifying Your Reality

There have been developed devices, which remove background noise and act in a selective way with the sounds one gets to perceive, something one wouldn’t be able to do normally. At the same time, they enhance the voice. Thus, parents can talk to their children on the playground or in the car without having to come close to them. It is like putting a microphone, and the one wearing the device will be then closer to what they need to listen to.

The Assistive Listening Devices for Children

Also known as ALDs, these bring the sounds closer to a child’s ears. The most common types in use are the FM systems for hearing aids and the Sound Field systems. Background noise is reduced, and faraway sounds are brought closer. Here is how the FM systems for hearing aids work. The parent, for example, or teacher, can talk into the microphone and send the sound of their voice to the child’s ear. There are two more parts involved in the system: the transmitter and the receiver.

Uses for FM Systems

When at school, children would use FM systems for hearing aids to be able to focus on the teacher’s speech. Pediatric audiologists now recommend the home use as well, which is convenient. The pieces are light and very easy to carry around. There can be a lot of chaos at home, especially when toddlers are involved, they switch their location fast, the TV is on, other people speak, parents could be generating noise when cooking or letting the water run, and so on. It is hard, for example, for a mother doing various works at home to also keep track of her child’s activity. The FM system promotes much better control over these situations when the little family members are in another room. Their age has no importance when using this. Moreover, these are customizable and can be used without a hearing aid, or paired with cochlear implants. A wide range of people can benefit of such technological achievement. Children may use the microphone themselves if desired or necessary. It would let them hear their own voice an
d learn to speak with greater clarity.

Why Do I Need FM System for Hearing Impaired?

FM systems are advanced assistive hearing tool that makes hearing easy in noise. People with normal hearing difficulty can also use such devices in order to eliminate background noise. FM systems are specifically quite useful as it amplifies the speaker’s voice in the presence of background noise. Such tools are quite effective in challenging sound environments, for example, conferences, meetings, group conversations and restaurants.

How Do FM System Work?
The FM system utilizes the Frequency Modulated Technology, which is an essential form of modulation, regardless of numerous forms of digital transmission being implemented at present. The following processes are followed to amplify the sound directly into the user’s ears:

1.    The source signal is sent to a microphone first;
2.    The signal is transmitted to a transmitter;
3.    The signal is sent wirelessly to a receiver. The receiver processes and amplifies the source sound and drives it right to the user’s ears through earphones, headphone or an assistive hearing aid device.

This process helps user hear a crystal clear sound, as the device bypass over surrounding noise, e.g., background noise, hiss, etc. You will find some aids with more than one microphone, which allows user to focus on particular sounds in his surroundings. This technology is quite useful when a user wants to hear people sitting at different location in a conference room or meeting room. For the comfort of the user, the FM systems for hearing impaired feature volume control.

Who Can Benefit From FM Systems?
FM systems are widely used today to help people hear better and eliminate the difficulty people face due to the hearing loss. Whilst FM systems were originally formed for pupils with hearing impairment to use in educational setup, they’re immensely used in various challenging listening situations by people with hearing problems.
Today, the FM system is not just limited to the people with hearing loss. It’s widely used for normal hearing by the people in conference rooms to acquire more concentration/attention and eliminate language comprehension dilemmas. FM systems for hearing impaired people boost the signals and deliver the improved signal to noise ratio.
Such hearing aids are specifically effective for those who have fluctuating hearing problems that don’t benefit from wearing hearing devices. Individuals with fluctuating middle ear situations, auditory neuropathy or reduced speech perception ability related to age might find the amplification of a signal received through the FM system significantly helpful.
In the presence of background noise, a mild high frequency hearing loss can also create a problem in speech perception. When hearing aids don’t work for people with a minor high frequency hearing loss, the FM system can be helpful to meet their communicative need.

All in all, the FM systems are used by people without hearing loss and with hearing loss. Many people who use the hearing aid find it tough to hear a voice clearly due to the background noise. The FM system integrated with a hearing aid can assist significantly with speech understanding in noisy environment.