Understanding Hearing Aids Once hair cells in the inner ear are dead, there’s no bringing them back. But hearing aids may significantly improve your ability to hear by making sounds louder and easier to understand. Hearing aids have a microphone to pick up sound, an amplifier to make sound louder, and a receiver that sends the sound into the ear canal. In modern digital aids, microphones transmit sound to a computer chip, which adjusts the volume and amplifies the sound frequencies needed to help improve your hearing. An audiologist can program a digital aid to filter out wind and other background noise, as well as fine-tune the aid to match your specific hearing loss pattern. More and more models can sync wirelessly with your smartphone, enabling you to take calls, stream audio, and even adjust your aid’s settings using an app. The right hearing aid for you depends on several factors, including the type and severity of your hearing loss, your lifestyle, and your manual dexterity. However, a hearing aid that one person likes might not work for someone else, even if both have almost identical audiograms (charts that show the degree of hearing loss for low-, middle-, and high-pitched sounds).