- Everyone with hearing loss
wants to hear better in background noise.
So, in this video,
I'm talking about noise cancellation in hearing aids.
Coming up.
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Hi, guys, Cliff Olson, doctor of audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona.
And on this channel,
I cover a bunch of hearing-related information
to help make you a better informed consumer.
So, if you're into that,
make sure you hit that Subscribe button,
and don't forget to click the bell to receive a notification
every time I post a new video.
In general, there are two different situations
that individuals with hearing loss want to hear better in,
situations with soft talkers,
and situations with background noise.
Now, if you wanna hear soft talkers better,
especially since people are now wearing masks more often,
then, make sure you check out my video
where I talk about the speech enhancer feature
that I will link in the description.
However, in this video, I'm talking about how to hear better
in a background noise situation using noise cancellation.
First, to provide some context,
let me explain how active noise cancellation,
otherwise known as ANC,
works inside of some popular consumer headphones.
Chances are you've already experienced
some of the noise canceling benefits
of a pair of over-the-ear headphones,
like these Bose QuietComfort,
when you're in an airplane
or when you're just at home
and someone's outside making a lot of noise.
Not only do these headphones
completely seal off around your ears
to provide some passive noise cancellation
just by blocking sound coming into your ear canals,
but it also does something called active noise cancellation.
Active noise cancellation is when a set of headphones
has external microphones that actually measures
incoming sound that you do not want to hear,
and when it identifies that sound,
it actually creates an inverted sound wave
to cancel out that incoming sound
so you hear even less of it.
This is why active noise cancellation
is so good when you're streaming audio from a tablet,
a laptop or your phone,
because all you're getting is that stream of sound
from the device that you want,
and everything else gets canceled out.
If you happen to have a set of headphones
like the Bose QuietComfort,
you can actually toggle on and off
active noise cancellation,
so you can actually hear the difference
that active noise cancellation makes.
So, if noise cancellation is so effective
inside of consumer electronics,
wouldn't it be awesome to have this technology
inside of hearing aids?
Well, that's what Phonak, today's video sponsor,
was thinking when they developed
the dynamic noise cancellation feature
inside of their Paradise Hearing Aids.
Dynamic noise cancellation is available
inside of the tier one, premium level P90 hearing aids.
The concept of this feature is to reduce background noise
so you do not have to exert as much listening effort
to hear in noisy situations.
Chances are, if you have a hearing loss,
then, you already know
that anytime you go into a background noise situation,
like a restaurant, an airplane, or a family gathering,
that you have to strain to understand speech
over the background noise.
Well, when you enter one of these environments,
AutoSense OS 4.0 will automatically identify
how much noise is in that environment,
and it will either switch you into a speech in noise
or a speech in loud noise program.
Both of these programs have a default amount
of dynamic noise cancellation
that can be set by your hearing care professional
in their programming software.
However, using the speech focus slider
inside of your myPhonak app,
you can actually adjust the strength
of dynamic noise cancellation
when you're in a noisy environment.
In the speech in noise program
for a moderately noisy environment,
the first half of the speech focus slider
controls the directional pickup of your microphones.
And the second half of the slider
controls the amount of dynamic noise cancellation.
When the background noise gets to a level
that automatically activates
your speech in loud noise program,
the entire slider controls the dynamic noise cancellation
since the hearing aids are already
in full directional microphone mode.
In a Phonak field study,
researchers identified that default and maximum settings
of dynamic noise cancellation
significantly reduce listening effort
in background noise situations
between a tough negative 3dB
and a positive 3dB signal-to-noise ratio range.
Now, you might be asking yourself,
"Can a hearing aid really reduce background noise
"as much as a pair of over-the-ear headphones?"
Well, the answer to this really depends.
If all you're trying to do is block out all external sound
so you can rock out to your favorite Taylor Swift song,
then, using a pair of over-the-ear headphones
with active noise cancellation is probably your best bet.
But if your goal
is to be able to cancel out background noise
and still be able to have a conversation
with the person who's in front of you,
then, going with the Phonak Paradise Hearing Aids
with dynamic noise cancellation is definitely the way to go.
You see, the job of a pair
of active noise cancellation headphones
is actually pretty easy.
All you're doing is streaming very clean audio
from a phone, a tablet, a laptop, or whatever,
and just canceling out literally everything else.
However, active noise cancellation headphones
cannot cancel out background noise
and still help you hear someone who you're talking to
in a noisy environment,
virtually rendering these things useless
when you're in a social situation.
When it comes to canceling out background noise
and still being able to have conversation
with someone in a noisy environment,
then, the Phonak Paradise with dynamic noise cancellation
is significantly better.
Now, if you wanna take all of this a step further,
then, using the Phonak PartnerMic or Phonak Roger microphone
can significantly improve your ability to hear
in background noise
because it takes the voice
of the person that you wanna hear,
and it streams it directly into both of your hearing aids.
This makes it so background noise literally
does not have enough time to mix in with the speech signal,
so you hear them like they're talking
right next to your ear.
At the end of the day, everybody's looking for that edge
to help them hear better in a complex listening situation,
and having a hearing aid with dynamic noise cancellation
could be that edge you're looking for.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comment section below.
If you liked the video, please share it.
If you wanna see other videos just like this one,
go ahead and hit that Subscribe button.
Also, feel free to check out my website, drcliffaud.com.
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