Coming through loud and clear: How technology addresses some of the hearing aid’s common pain points

Fitting snug behind the wearer’s ear, the M&RIE – pronounced “Marie” – looks like any other hearing aid. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the way it sounds.

Through clever design, M&RIE addresses some of hearing aid wearers’ common pain points, improving clarity in situations with a lot of ambient noise like crowded restaurants and windy outdoor areas.

Overall, it provides a more natural, less strenuous listening experience compared to traditional behind-the-ear hearing aids.

And by doing so, M&RIE can help remove barriers and improve lives, says Hearing Australia Principal Audiologist Commercial Clinical Services, Karen Hirschausen.

“Hearing aid technology has really progressed significantly over the last decade,” Hirschausen says. “But this is something that is quite new and quite unique.”

Traditional behind-the-ear hearing aids, as the name suggests, pick up sound via two microphones located on a device tucked behind the wearer’s ear.

This sound then passes to the ear canal via an ear mould or a thin tube.

These devices offer the wearer life-changing benefits. But they don’t take advantage of the way the ear’s natural shape is designed to pick up sound.

“You might notice yourself, if you’re struggling to hear something, by putting your hand behind your ear and effectively increasing the size of your ear, it can capture more sound,” Hirschausen says. “And you feel like you’re hearing better, because you’re basically making your ear bigger and capturing more sound.”

Every ear is different, with its own unique bumps and grooves. As people grow, their brain becomes used to interpreting sound through these shapes.

Audiologists understand it as an individual’s “acoustic fingerprint”.

Because traditional behind-the-ear hearing aids capture sound from a slightly different place – behind the ears – they don’t utilise the ear’s natural shape. As a result, they create an incomplete sound picture, and it’s up to the brain to fill in the gaps. This is why hearing aid wearers can sometimes have trouble identifying the direction of a sound in noisy settings.

“Listening effort’s a really big thing, but people don’t really realise how much of an impact it has until you start to lose your hearing,” Hirschausen says. “But when you’ve got to pay a lot more attention to what somebody’s saying, or you’re using a lot more context or your brains trying to fill in all the pieces that you are missing out on, it takes a lot of cognitive effort to do so.

“Often people with hearing loss find that being in a difficult-to-hear environment can be very tiring. So being in a shopping centre or being at a restaurant or a coffee shop with friends, they’re having to expel a lot more energy to be able to follow along with the conversation. So they leave those environments a lot more tired than somebody who doesn’t have hearing loss.”

With one clever design tweak, M&RIE addresses the sound source problem and provides more accurate, less strenuous listening for wearers compared to traditional behind-the-ear hearing aids. And it’s all in the name – Microphone & Receiver-In-Ear.

M&RIE combines the two microphones of a traditional behind-the-ear hearing aid with a third microphone and receiver that sits within the ear.

“What it means is you get a more natural sound because it’s using that shape of your ear,” Hirschausen says. “So it’s filtering it out and pushing it into your ear canal in a much more natural way.”

More than 80% of listeners were better at telling where sound came from when they used M&RIE compared to traditional behind-the-ear hearing aids in a recent study conducted by the National Acoustic Laboratories, Hearing Australia’s research arm.

Two out of three listeners in the same study preferred M&RIE across a range of noisy environments, and more than 80% said they preferred M&RIE in environments with moderate noise, like a food court.

Devices like M&RIE mean hearing impairment doesn’t have to get in the way of life – whether it’s a clear conversation on the fairway with a golfing partner, despite it being a windy day, or being able to enjoy the special moments of a catch up with friends, even though the restaurant is busy.

“I think anything that provides somebody with a more natural listening experience, and anything that reduces that listening effort, or that cognitive overload for people is a really great thing,” Hirschausen says, “and something that we would like as many clients to have the opportunity to be able to experience.”

To make it even easier for every Australian to receive the expert hearing care they deserve, Hearing Australia is visiting 1,000 locations during March as part of the “Hearing the Nation Tour” delivering FREE* 15-minute hearing checks for adults.

Find an event near you for your free* 15-minute hearing check.

Or book an appointment today.