These Aren't Your Granddad's Hearing Aids

Sleek and stylish. Spontaneous and active.

The adjectives sound like an ideal romantic partner.

But the description doesn't apply to someone who will hang breathlessly on your every word; rather, it's something that can help you hear virtually every word.

Hearing aid brochures and ads are touting the virtues of the latest technology to counter hearing loss, whether the cause be listening to eardrum-rattling music, a side effect of myriad prescriptions or simply age, said Ray Jones, hearing aid specialist and owner of Jones Hearing Centers, which has about 40 offices in Texas and Louisiana.

Barely-there hearing aids these days can be digital, programmed and remote-controlled, he said.

The technology has come a long way from the brass horns that passed for hearing aids in the late 19th century.

With the digital process, sound enters the microphone, is converted into computer code, cleaned up and processed before being fed into the ear -- "just like taking the scratches out of a vinyl record and making it sound like a CD or MP3 player," said audiologist David Carothers, who runs a Jones Hearing Center in Lake Worth.

Petite, high-tech hearing aids can block out the roar of the happy-hour crowd to home in on one-on-one conversation, rather than indiscriminately amplifying everything.

"With dual microphones, one mike listens for speech and lifts it or clarifies it; the other mike listens for the junk, the background noise, and uses it to muffle it," Carothers said.

And researchers are on the verge of incorporating a minuscule cellphone receiver with a hearing aid, Jones said.

"The phone would ring, you say 'Hello,' and your voice activates the phone," he said.