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.