When the patient’s two hearing instruments can exchange large amounts of data very quickly, new signal processing possibilities are opened up. Complex signal processing is only available when using a high speed communication link between instruments and is not feasible using Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz data transmission technologies.
Some manufacturers have chosen to use communication between instruments to create an artificial, situation specific, narrow directionality mode. In contrast, Oticon uses high speed data sharing to balance the gain and compression response between the two hearing instruments. This allows the instruments to preserve the on-going, ear-to-ear level differences in sound that are so vital to localization.
The more easily a patient can identify various distinct sounds in the environment, the easier it is to distinguish between these sounds. They can then choose which one to attend to and which ones to ignore. The auditory system is a binaural system and Spatial Sound is designed to support the natural localization process.