Beltone Trust White Paper - Effect of Direction Strategy
ReSound Connect
Directional microphones in hearing aids have been
well-documented to improve speech recognition in
noise in laboratory conditions. The real-world perceived
benefits of directionality have been less dramatic.
The development of directional technology during
the past decade has focused on improving laboratory
benefit by means of adaptive behavior, and more recently,
binaural beamforming made possible by earto-
ear audio streaming. In contrast, Beltone has pursued
a strategy for applying directional technology that
takes advantage of auditory processing by the brain,
with the goal of optimizing real-world benefit. In this
study, Beltone CrossLink Directionality 2 is compared
to two commercially available binaural beamformers to
explore the possible advantages and disadvantages of
these very different approaches to applying hearing aid
directionality.