Buying a Hearing Aid | Kilmarnock Hearing Care Kilmarnock Hearing Centre

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Buying a Hearing Aid

Discover the Right Hearing Aid for You

We work with the world’s leading hearing aid manufacturers to provide you with the best and most up to date technology available. We see it as our duty to provide you with best advice for your needs at all times.

Years of counselling experience has taught us that when considering investment in a hearing aid system there are a two of key factors which potential users need to address, namely the style and technology level of the system.

Hearing Aids

Modern Hearing Aid Benefits

Modern digital hearing aids offer a range of benefits that can significantly improve your hearing experience and overall quality of life. Here are some of the key advantages.

Superior Sound Quality

Digital hearing aids provide clearer and more natural sound by processing incoming sounds with advanced algorithms. This helps to reduce background noise, enhance speech clarity, and deliver a richer, more natural listening experience.

Customisable Settings

Digital hearing aids can be finely tuned to match your specific hearing needs and preferences. Our Audiologists can adjust the settings to enhance certain frequencies, making it easier to hear conversations, music, and environmental sounds.

Noise Reduction and Feedback Cancellation

Modern hearing aids come with sophisticated noise reduction and feedback cancellation features. This helps to minimize unwanted background noise and prevent the annoying whistling sounds that older hearing aids often produced.

Connectivity

Many digital hearing aids can connect to smartphones, tablets, and other devices via Bluetooth. This allows you to stream phone calls, music, and other audio directly to your hearing aids, making it easier to stay connected and entertained.

Discreet Design

Today’s hearing aids are smaller, more discreet, and comfortable to wear. Some models are virtually invisible when worn, giving you the confidence to wear them without feeling self-conscious.

Adaptability

Digital hearing aids can automatically adapt to different listening environments. Whether you’re in a quiet room, a noisy restaurant, or watching TV, they can adjust their settings to provide the best possible hearing experience.

Data Logging

Many modern hearing aids have data logging features that track your usage and listening environments. This information can be used by your audiologist to make precise adjustments and ensure your hearing aids are performing optimally.

Improved Battery Life

Advancements in battery technology have led to longer-lasting batteries and rechargeable options. This means less frequent battery changes and more convenience for you. Rechargeable hearing aids do not need batteries changed, which prevents the need for having to open the battery door, which can be tricky for some people. The hearing aids just need to be “docked” in their charger to charge them.

Health Monitoring

Some advanced hearing aids come with built-in health monitoring features, such as tracking your physical activity and detecting falls. This can provide an extra layer of safety and health awareness.

Telehealth Capabilities

Digital hearing aids often support remote adjustments and telehealth consultations. This allows you to receive professional support and fine-tuning from the comfort of your home.

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All Our Hearing Aids Include a 5 Year Warranty

Recent advances in hearing aid technology mean that most hearing losses can now be treated with a wide range of hearing aid styles. During your appointment, we’ll discuss the options available and help you choose the most suitable solution based on your hearing needs, lifestyle, preferences, and budget.

When making our recommendation, we’ll consider a number of key factors, including:

Hearing loss degree and type

The degree and type of hearing loss is perhaps the main factor to consider in a selection of style. Also important is the relative shape of the hearing loss, with many losses predominating in the high frequency (treble) pitches.

Cosmetic Preference

Here we try to allow you to have the style of your choice provided it fits with the audiological needs of your hearing loss. Where compromise needs to be made, we explain and justify this with reference to all other relevant factors.

Physical comfort

This is an important consideration because you are likely to be wearing the devices for up to sixteen hours per day. Occlusion (the blocking of the ear canal) is a major consideration here and we always aim to limit this.

Handling issues

You need to be able to insert and remove the devices with relative ease and to handle batteries (although many systems are now rechargeable) and daily maintenance. In some case this may influence the choice of size of the device. There may also be controls, although most systems are now either automatically self-controlled or managed by remote control which these days is often a smart phone app.

Your budget

In most cases the choice of style will have no impact on the budget in that cost is more to do with technology level which is the subject of the next section.

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Choose Your Style

Having decided on the preferred style we would then move to a consideration of technology level. All hearing aid systems are now digital and very flexibly programmable to accurately match overall hearing loss. But there are significant differences in the onboard technological features.

Hearing and Types

Discover the Right Hearing Aid for You

Whilst there are differences in implementation from manufacturer to manufacturer the technological features can be broadly classified as follows:

Directional microphones

This allows you as the user to focus on what you want to hear, usually speech, rather than simply hearing all noise in the environment.

Noise suppression

The aim here is on allowing the speech signal to dominate where there is competing background noise.

Speech enhancement

The speech signal is further enhanced to optimise your ability to understand speech in the presence of babble and background noise.

We are here for you every step of the way

In most systems the above features are combined and work together in a powerful way for your benefit. This increases as you advance up the technology level and in advising you about this choice we will consider certain factors.

Certain losses are more challenging than others and here we would be looking closely at your ability to process speech in quiet surroundings and in the presence of background noise.

The needs of an active business executive are very different from those of a retiree. They are different but equally important to the individual user so lifestyle is carefully considered.

Here we would be looking at the choice between automatic function needing no intervention from the user and a higher level of user control. We would also be considering the use of smart phone apps, blue tooth streaming and other accessories. More about thus following on from this section.

The technology level is the main factor in determining the price. Generally, the higher up the scale you travel the better will be the hearing aid system at coping with difficult listening situations, and the higher will be its price.

Hearing Aid Prices