Focuses on one speaker, suppresses all others
Before Oticon Opn, most hearing aids coped with noise by restricting your focus to one sound source at a time – such as a person straight in front of you – while suppressing all other sounds.
However, background sounds often include important speech details. When these are not passed on to your brain, it becomes very difficult to follow the conversation and you become tired*.
By reducing sounds coming from around you – speech and noise alike – traditional hearing aids may give you an unnatural listening experience.
* Hornsby et al, 2016, sponsored by Oticon
** Le Goff et al, 2016, Oticon whitepaper, sponsored by Oticon
