2011: 56th International Congress of Hearing Aid Acousticians

"Advanced hearing systems alone aren’t enough,” Martin Blecker told more than 40 representatives of the media on the first day of the Congress held in Nuremberg. "It is the hearing aid acoustician that brings them to life, makes them unfold the complete range of features for better hearing.”

This fact must be emphasised as public perception of impaired hearing mostly focuses on the products and their innovative features. However, this is only one side of the coin.

Guided tour of the exhibition: exhibitors presenting their innovations

During the guided tour of the exhibition, four exhibiting companies showcased this year’s product innovations:

• a dustproof, particularly robust and, above all, waterproof hearing system
• a cordless phone that directly connects to the hearing systems in real time – and may be used by hearing aid users as well as by people with normal hearing
• customisable in-the-ear hearing aids as well as refined behind-the-ear hearing devices with exceptional design options
• a hearing system designed for first-time users with special design and instantly discernible hearing improvements

Showroom: thirteen highlights and three hands-on zones

This year’s thirteen product highlights were showcased as part of an impressive exhibition set up in the showroom exclusively for media representatives.

For the first time, the show featured three hands-on zones: Harald Bonsel, vice chairman of the EUHA, gave details about speech intelligibility in noise, and, performing SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) measurements, had media representatives experience the problems that even people with normal hearing have, let alone those with hearing impairments. "It is the hearing aid acoustician’s job to approximate the hearing impaired person’s SNR as closely as possible to the normal SNR,” as Bonsel said.

Using "Klangfinder”, acousticans Albert Moll, Jan-Hinnerk Matthies, and Sandra Venanzi illustrated the sound of music and intelligibility in noise via three preset types of hearing aids. Representatives of the media had a chance to hear the differences themselves, differences that were striking indeed.

In the "earmould workflow” zone, EUHA board member Wolfgang Luber provided information on in-ear impressions and earmoulds for hearing systems, hearing protectors and earphones – including a live demonstration of an in-ear impression. Plus: media representatives were offered the chance to have an in-ear impression taken so as to have earmoulds for hearing protectors or an iPod earphone made and sent to them later on – a great "give-away”, as media representatives commented.

These demonstrations made the media events a complete success, not least because they brought together the two sides of the coin – product innovations and the hearing aid acoustician’s skills in fitting hearing aids.

We should like to thank the following companies for their support for the hands-on zones in the showroom: Acousticon, Egger, Klangspektrum.