Dr.-Ing. Stefan Petrausch, Erlangen
Video 19
“CROS and BiCROS fittings: Requirements and solutions for the management of single-sided deafness”
For people with single-sided deafness, hearing instruments transmitting sound from the deaf ear to the contralateral side, i.e. “contralateral routing of signals“ (CROS), have been available for several years. In the case of normal hearing in one ear, the audio signal from the deaf side is transmitted and played back exclusively (CROS fitting), while in the case of a hearing loss on the non-deaf side, the audio signal is mixed with the signal compensating for hearing loss (BiCROS fitting).
Thanks to wireless transmission of audio signals between the two hearing instruments, such solutions have become more and more interesting both for cosmetic and practical reasons. Recent developments go beyond pure copying of audio signals from one side to the other.
In this talk, I shall point out how a dedicated binaural combination of transmitting and receiving devices can fulfil special requirements for the target group of single-sided deafness. An intelligent control of directional processing can help the hearing impaired to follow conversations from the deaf ear side, even in noisy situations. Furthermore, features such as adaptive compression, wind noise cancellation, and low self-noise are of particular importance in single-sided deafness.