Julie Christensen, M.S., CCC-A
Boys Town Hearing and Balance Center

“I hear but I don’t understand.” Most people with hearing loss can hear vowel sounds but miss higher frequency consonant sounds because their hearing is worse in the higher pitches.

Consonants make speech clear. Think of the words: bash, bath, bat, bass. If you don’t hear the final consonant, all of these words sound alike. Even lip reading isn’t enough. “Bat” and “mat” look identical to lip readers. So do “fat” and “vat.”

But hearing aids can’t make the highest pitches loud enough for many people. It’s an acoustic-engineering issue. Also, studies suggest that ears with hearing loss may lack the hair cells to make loud high frequency sounds meaningful, even if they could be amplified. That means that some speakers, especially women and children, will be harder to understand, even with hearing aids.

Enter frequency compression/transposition hearing aids. These hearing aids capture high frequency sounds, and instead of making them louder, shift them down into the lower frequency regions where most people’s hearing is a little better. Some studies show that people who hear more high frequency sounds do better in background noise, too.

Many people love this technology from the start, but other listeners go through an adjustment period. If you haven’t heard the /s/ sound in years, it can be hard to get used to it, especially when it’s shifted to a lower frequency. At first, it can sound like everyone is lisping. Within a few weeks, most people say that the lisp is gone and just the /s/ sound is left in its place. That’s the sentence every audiologist wants to hear! There are cases where people never adjust, but they are rare, especially with the newest technology.

Like all of our hearing aids, these hearing aids come with a 30-day trial period and a 2-year loss/damage/repair warranty. Call your audiologist if you want to set up an appointment to listen to frequency compression/transposition hearing aids. One company has just introduced a micro-version that fits behind the ear and is only an inch long. Your audiologist can tell you if these hearing aids are right for your hearing configuration.