Hearing Aids Are Made Of Four Basic Parts That Assist In Restoring Hearing

Hearing aids are made of four basic components that assist the wearer in hearing clearly.  As an improvement over traditional bulky hearing aids, today’s smaller programmable hearing aids can have additional components that allow more functionality and versatility.  The main components of a hearing aid are the microphone, an amplifier, a receiver and batteries.

There can be anywhere from one to several microphones attached to a hearing aid.  These microphones serve to gather sound from an outside source and transmit it to the amplifier.  The microphone placement and function is very important as it is the hearing aid’s first chance to gather sound from the outside.  A malfunctioning microphone is the same as wearing no hearing aid at all.

The amplifier portion of the hearing aid does as its name indicates.  The amplifier gathers the sound from the microphone and increases it in preparation for transmission to the receiver.  The amplifier is essential to the function of the hearing aid, as sound amplification is what most forms of hearing loss take away from the auditory system.

The receiver is the part of the hearing aid which actually transmits the amplified sound into the inner ear.  Hearing aid receivers convert the electronic signal from the amplifier into external sound waves  that can be processed by the nerve endings in the inner ear.  

The batteries are the heartbeat of the hearing aid.  In traditional hearing aids, the batteries are large and are housed in the block of the hearing aid that rests behind the ear.  Modern digital hearing aids have smaller batteries which are housed in the body of the hearing aid.  

Hearing aids are complicated devices specifically designed to assist in the amplification of sound waves from an external source, through the auditory system of the ear and into the nerve endings of the inner ear.  Proper care and maintenance of hearing aids is essential to the basic function and can insure the long life of the devices.

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