from the audio signal to form a compensated audio signal compression processor 340 is connected to the output of subtracting means 208 for processing the compensated audio signal speaker 220 connected to amplifier 218 at the output of hearing aid processor 340 converts the processed compensated audio signal into a sound signal if the processed compensated audio signal is a digital signal it is converted back to analog not shown 0033 fig4 is a block diagram showing a hearing aid 400 which is very similar to hearing aid 300 of fig3 except that compression element 440 modifies its operation according to information from feedback cancellation 450 depending upon the type of feedback cancellation the types of information available and useful to compression block 440 will vary taking as an example a feedback cancellation block 450 identical to 250 of fig2 the coefficients of zero model 212 will change with time as feedback cancellation 350 attempts to compensation for feedback testing one or more of these coefficients to determine whether they are outside expected ranges in magnitude or are changing faster than expected gives a clue as to whether feedback cancellation 350 is having difficulty compensating for the feedback for example an increase in the magnitude of the zero coefficient vector might indicate the presence of an incoming sinusoid if it appears that feedback compensation 450 is having trouble compensating for feedback signal 406 would indicate to compression block 440 to.