More Sound from Behind than in Front?

Hearing Aids
#1

With aids, is it common to hear better with one’s back turned to a speaker than when facing the speaker?

With the small RIC aid I’m trying, I can understand people in noise better when I’m walking away from them! This makes some sense, because the mics are behind my ear, but it sure isn’t very practical.

Is this common among all manufacturers and aid types?

#2

It may be the case that the cable on your hearing aid is too long.

The hearing aid should sit high on your ear and you should expect that sound amplification from the front and back to be similar, but the back should not be louder.

Try requesting a shorter cable length and see if that helps.

#3

No. In fact, if you have directional microphones, the HA should suppress sounds from the rear, if the feature has been turned on. Maybe your audi did not enable it.

#4

Also, in many automatic aids, the mike are omnidirectional until the background noise gets too high.

#5

One question about directional mics and filltering noise from behind. Does they only correct their design charasteristic (siting on the top of ear) or technology goes beyond that and filter noise beter than normal hearing pearson natural ear (or cic)?

#6

Phonak pioneered a feature called RealEar Sound (now in it’s second generation in the Audeo YES V, IX and Versata and Exelia/Art) which has been licenced by Oticon as FrontFocus which corrects the directionality in the pinna’s natural frequency response range (2-4Khz) to compensate for the fact that the microphone is on top of, rather than in the ear. This mode is active in quiet situations, giving a Directivity index of about 1dB at 2 -4 Khz (the natural amount that the ear makes sound louder from the front than behind). Directionality can deliver between 2dB SNR in open fits up to 7dB SNR (multi microphone array super directionality) when the ear canal is occluded. Every 1dB increase in signal to noise ratio (SNR)- (speeh louder than noise) gives about 10-15% better speech understanding in noise than omni directional mode can.

Have a look here: www.phonak.com/com_028-0088-xx_background_story_real_ear_sound.pdf