Is Oticon REAL the best hearing aid for understanding speech in noise? Why?
Updated: Nov 1
Understanding speech in a noisy environment is the battlefield for hearing aid manufacturers. In 2022 and 2023 they all brought up their A-game, but still, Oticon BrainHearing seems to be the one standing out. This article explains the features of Oticon hearing aids, the BrainHearing technology.
You landed on this article because you are in search of a pair of hearing aids to help manage your hearing loss. You need the best technology available to help understand speech in the crowd and in the presence of background noise, but also at the best price. You may have heard that Oticon BrainHearing is the best technology among the big-6 hearing aid manufacturers and you are curious to know if this is true and how you can purchase a pair of Oticon hearing aids with BrainHearing feature so you hear better in the coffee shops and restaurants. If this is you, then continue reading to learn more about the Oticon range of hearing aids, their advantages, their price range and where to buy Oticon hearing aids at the best price. See the Oticon hearing aids price list here.
In this article you will learn about:
Why understanding speech in noise is difficult?
How do other hearing aid manufacturers manage speech processing in noise?
How Oticon BrainHearing is different compared to other technologies in speech processing?
Does the Oticon BrainHearing really boost speech intelligibility in the presence of background noise?
What is Oticon BrainHearing and how does it work?
What is Oticon More Sound intelligence and how does it work?
What is the range of Oticon hearing aids?
What's the best budget-friendly Oticon hearing aid?
What is the price range of Oticon hearing aids for sale?
Do Oticon hearing aids connect to my smartphone and my laptop?
What are the pros and cons of Oticon hearing aids?
What is the life expectancy of Oticon hearing aids?
Why should you choose Oticon hearing aids?
What are the available hearing aid accessories for Oticon REAL?
Has Oticon REAL got its own App?
What are the differences between Oticon REAL technology levels 1, 2 and 3?
I inherited a pair of Oticon Real hearing aids, can I use them for myself?
Why understanding speech in noise is difficult?
Hearing speech in the presence of background noise is harder for several reasons. One is that the level of noise could be so loud that starts masking the speech signal that the audience wishes to hear. Most premium hearing aids are able to strip off different background noise signals of the received signal and only amplify the speech signal. But what if the background noise is the same spectrum of human speech, like the background noise you hear in a coffee shop a busy restaurant or a busy art gallery? In such a case processing the main speech from the background noise becomes a difficult task for the hearing aid.
How do other hearing aid manufacturers manage speech processing in noise?
Each of the hearing aid manufacturers has a different approach to processing the sound to clarify and make the speech part of it more understandable to the wearer. The sound processing happens in the hearing aids in real-time and it accounts for most of the latency (or delay) of the sound heard through the hearing aids. The delay is about 5 to 7 milliseconds for most of the hearing aid manufacturers except for Widex which is less than 1 msec, (read more here).
Until about a couple of years back directional microphones were the proven and the best technique that manufacturers hired to improve the SNR of the received signal (signal-to-noise ratio). The wearer would receive a higher amplification for the signal s/he received from the front (beaming effect). This would diminish the noise and other unwanted signals that are at the sides and behind the wearer.
In addition to directional microphones, Signia adopted a technique in which the speech is stripped off from the received signal and trimmed and shaped in a separate processing path while the background signal is also processed on a different path simultaneously. This dual processing approach in the