In this modern age it seems that just about anything that can has "gone digital." This includes common things from photographs to phone calls to music and much more. It is hard to dispute that "digital" is the in thing and one reason for this is that there are definite advantages to digital technology in most cases. In the realm of assistive listening devices, digital is also in and digital hearing aids are becoming the standard.

Digital hearing aids were first introduced to the marketplace over twenty years ago, in the early 1980s. However, they did not immediately gain in popularity, mainly because of their size and the fact that they were so easily seen while being worn, even more so than the traditional analogue, in the ear hearing aids.

However, in the decade of the 90s, the fast developments that were happening in technology in general, and the major advancements in miniaturization in specific, brought about an entirely new crop of digital hearing aids that were considerably smaller in size. This smaller size allowed these units to be more discrete, lightweight and comfortable and led to a surge in popularity.

Many people think that nowadays all of them are digital. But the fact of the matter is that the traditional analogue and the high-tech digital devices work quite differently.

As a result, both types of its products are still on the market and likely will be for some time to come. The analogue units use a microphone to pick up sounds, which are then converted to electrical signals, which are then amplified.

The more advanced analogue hearing aids are programmed to compress the sound through a process of "automatic gain control." This is done to amplify quieter sounds so they can be heard readily, yet at the same time filter out the louder sounds that do not need to be amplified.

This is intended to protect the person wearing them from uncomfortably loud noises. Unfortunately, even the best of the analogue devices do not accomplish this important task as well as digital hearing aids do.

The digital types of hearing aids are based on a completely different principle than analogue units. They are designed to better overcome the issues related to background noises. Digital devices convert the input from the microphone into digital bits of information which can then be processed through a minute computer that is an integral part of these types of assistive listening devices.

This process makes it possible to monitor the various incoming sounds and better process these sounds in ways that simply is not possible for analogue devices to match. The most advanced of the digital aids can be adjusted in almost infinite ways to meet the needs of the individual wearers. Many models even have the capacity to adjust automatically to correct for various circumstances and unique sound environments.

Even with the advancements in digital hearing aids, the technology is still not foolproof. Very noisy situations, such as are often encountered in noisy bars, pubs and restaurants can still present a challenge. One way to overcome very noisy backgrounds is to wear hearing aids in both ears which can help to better filter out the ambient noise that often distorts conversations.