facts & figures New Hearing Aid Enhances Sound From All Directions (NAPSA)—It’s finally here: a hearing aid that gives users the freedom to follow all the conversations in a noisy environment and personalize preferences to their unique needs. Traditionally, hearing aids offered userslittle control over what they heard, only amplifying voices directly in front of the wearer and eliminating voices \f coming from elsewhere. This is knownas tunnel hearing. This new hearing aid, called Azure, is the first that focuses on the way a listener’s brain perceives sounds, allowing them to enter the ear and then letting the brain decide which to focus on. Users can now understand speech not only in front but also to the sides and rear. This is called Natural Directionality™. Think of a typical restaurant scene. Without Natural Directionality, wearers would not be able to hear the waiter asking what they would like to eat and participate in a conversation with a friend sitting right next to them. Plus, all of this takes place with no effort by the user. It’s that simple. How It Works Azure offers a good kind of selective hearing. By relying on the brain to sort out and prioritize what the user wants to hear, the choice is controlled by the user just as it was before the hearing loss set in. The result is natural sound quality that rivals natural hearing. Personalized Comfort We've all had to turn down the TV when a commercial comes on that is much louder than a program. Most hearing instruments don’t recognize the difference between the TV show at a normal Azure, the first hearing aid to combat tunnel hearing, allows users to follow the conversations of several speakers in every direction. volume and the used-car salesman screaming in the commercial. Hearing aid technology is now smart enough to recognize these two unique situations. Healthcare providers can adjust and set the volumelevels so the user can hear the show without the painful commercial screams. In fact, Azure recognizes seven distinct environments the users may encounter every day and adjusts to ensure personal comfort. Seek Help; ImproveLife If you or someone you love has hearing loss, a simple test and hearing aid can greatly improve life. Research shows that people with untreated hearing loss make around $12,000 less each year than those who treat hearing loss—sometimes more. If it’s your vision that’s waning, you are the only one affected. If your hearing is lost, your friends, family and co-workers are the ones that suffer. To learn more, you can visit www.tryazure.com.
