Hearing aids - Update

Written on .

 

The leading brands of hearing aids in the world are probably

Earsmate and Jinghao. They and other Chinese companies supply the 1.7 billion Chinese, plus many Indians and other neighbors, with hearing aids.

According to incomplete statistics, there are now 466 million people with hearing impairment worldwide. Among them, nearly 34 million children, is expected to reach 900 million people by 2050, according to survey statistics, the largest number of people wearing hearing aids are children. (Earsmate)

Thanks to extraordinarily high production runs, Chinese manufacturers can deliver cheaply, for example through Alibaba.com for Jinghao:

Individualisierbar

Mindestbestellmenge: 1000 Stück

5,50-8,00 $

„Individualisierbar” --  Customizable means that the devices can be supplied with the buyer's logo and lettering, starting from a minimum order quantity. This allows European and American companies to present themselves to customers as the developer and manufacturer of the product. Sometimes a photo comparison with google lens can help to determine the true origin of a device.

If the expected sales figures for a device in Europe and America are high enough, contract manufacturing in China can also be worthwhile, making it possible to equip a device with special gimmicks and features and offer better quality throughout.

Analog vs. Digital

In Germany, there are strange regulations in place that shackle and unnecessarily restrict the audio industry. What's more, these regulations seem to be written by industry representatives who wanted to make their devices as complicated and therefore as expensive as possible:

Hearing aids dispensed to insured persons at a fixed price must be fully digital, have at least three hearing programs and at least four adjustable frequency channels, and be equipped with multi-microphone technology, noise and feedback suppression.

One wonders why the devices can't also brew coffee and warn of a nuclear attack.

In the UK, the NHS specifically supplies certain devices that customers say are quite good for their price.

 The National Health Service (NHS) in the UK provides hearing aids to eligible individuals at no cost. To be eligible for an NHS hearing aid, you must have a hearing loss that is severe enough to affect your daily life and communication.

In Germany, the regulations have led to an inflation of chain-connected hearing aid shops present in almost every small town, run by friendly but not very competent ladies who make appointments with a traveling technician who provides expertise to several such shops in the respective area.

Regulations in Germany ensure that analog devices are not offered by official hearing acousticians. If you want an analog device, you have to search the internet and pay for it yourself. The last (and only?) provider of analog hearing aids in Germany disappeared just recently, leaving no trace behind.

Why analog devices at all?

The granddaddy of analog devices is probably the Phonak Lyric, an implantable device that needs to be replaced when the battery runs out.

A manufacturer of modern analog devices (The Analog Hearing Aid Company) tells us:
You are correct to say that analog hearing aids do have some disadvantages like auditory feedback, amplification of unwanted sounds, etc.

So how do we deal with that.  

First it is important to realize that as the market shifted - there became a tendency for analog hearing aids to be seen as cheaper/older alternatives to the modern digital hearing aids.    The tendencies were to reduce cost and achieve a lower price.   This is especially prevalent in the unbranded and low branded Chinese manufacturers.   As digital moved down the Moore's law cost curve, most analog manufacturers either exited or shifted to making cheaper and cheaper products.    This was often done by using cheaper - non medical grade - components.    We have even seen "hearing aids," using the speakers that come in musical greeting cards.

At the Analog Hearing Aid company we took a different approach.    We believe there is a market for premium sound, and we have returned with designs that use the highest quality medical grade transducers.    This alone yields huge benefits in terms of sound quality, and a reduction in amplification of undesired sounds - simply by choosing microphones and receivers with response curves which are well matched to the class D amplifiers.

We include exclusive Aer-Tips creating a seal that matches the shape of the ear canal, we are able to eliminate most feedback for most of our customers.   These perform at a level that basic circular domes cannot match.

A very convincing presentation. But let’s face it: digital has won over analog and established itself as the almost exclusive market leader because of the unwanted and unavoidable noises produced by analog hearing aids. Their entire body acts as a microphone picking up a myriad of rustling and crackling noises whenever they are moving or are being touched.

However, there is a way of dealing with this problem by locating analog devices only

Among the current crop of available analog hearing aids are those well known small red and blue Chinese in-ears sold by several companies. Also, there are numerous Chinese brands offering behind-the-ear analog hearing aids of about the same size and shape as customary digital devices.

Let us face it: analog hearing aids have for a long time been badmouthed by the digital competition (and by sales people thriving on selling expensive digital gear) as being clunky, primitive, noisy, cheap, trashy.

Instead, the analog devices – if well implemented – are the only ones offering a satisfactory level of fidelity.

The digital industry is busy explaining that only digital processing permits to “achieve” certain supposedly advantageous characteristics of their gadgets: for instance being able to “boost” spoken word recognition over surrounding noise – a feature seeming attractive to poor hard-of-hearing people who experience difficult communication  in noisy surroundings.

However, the digital industry fails to tell customers that for every “boost” there must be a corresponding trough in the response. The more you tailor the response to make it desirable or insert new gimmicks (e.g. noise suppression), the more the response is altered, becomes kinky and unnatural. In the end, only the honest-to-John analog rendering of a sonic event will provide truthful hearing and listener satisfaction

Also, the gimmickry prevailing in modern digital hearing aids implies a drain on the limited capacity of the rechargeable (lithium based?) batteries. Since the brands compete in offering small "invisible" gadgets, batteries and amplifiers are faced with a cruel limit to size. The resulting product is a hearing aid device which performs satisfactorily only under moderate levels of sound pressure. Any loud noise will drive it into clipping and possibly force it to shut off in order to protect its delicate innards from damage. 

In Germany, the hearing industry is threatened by the imminent arrival of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids coming from America. Chances are that some of the new arrivals will outperform traditional by prescription models.

Hence it is not surprising that the established retail sellers are now busy launching vigorous marketing efforts aimed at luring potential customers to acquire a prescription model as long as the current payment system is still sustained by the health care insurers, and OTC models have not yet upset the market. 

Print