If you have a severe to profound high frequency loss (loss greater than 65dB at 2KHz and above) you are probably unable to hear the high frequency voiceless sounds /s/, /sh/, /t/, /th/, /f/ etc. These sounds are critical for understanding speech. For example /s/, is the phoneme that conveys more grammatical information than any other sound in the English language (think about plurals, possessives, third person singular, contractions, etc.). With DFC you will have access to this sound and other voiceless sounds that will improve your speech understanding.
Understanding speech is like playing the game Wheel of Fortune. When you only see the vowels, its much more difficult to solve the puzzle. As consonants are added, your ability to solve the puzzle increases and your confidence grows. When playing Wheel of Fortune, we are also aware that consonants, like s and t, are much more valuable than others. This is because they occur with greater frequency in written language and help us solve the puzzle faster. The same is true with speech. The more voiceless sounds you hear, the better your speech understanding. You need a hearing aid that provides the most complete picture of speech; a hearing aid that helps you solve the speech-understanding puzzle.
