'Woah… piano playing!' Deaf Canadian man beams as he hears for the first time in decades after his digital ear implant is switched on

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This is the incredible moment a deaf Canadian man hears voices again for the first time in decades thanks to a digital ear implant.

Heartwarming footage shows the moment the man, a teacher named only as Chris A., experiences sounds again through an advanced ear implant.

He laughs and smiles as he adjusts to human speech, which he says at first sounds like an overwhelming array of digitized 'piano playing'. 

Moment of truth: Chris A., who was filmed having an advanced digital ear implant activated, smiles as he learns to recognize sounds again. He is pictured, right, reacting to his own voice

As the video continues, he adapts to the new input until he can understand voices - including his own - and reacts with shock and joy at the new sounds.

Soon he can hear well enough to understand his mother saying 'I love you' - though he admits that all voices still seem 'like a Doctor Who robot'.

Chris was fitted with a cochlear implant, which overrides the body's natural hearing mechanism with a series of digital receivers and microphones.

The implant is wired directly to the inner ear, where the high-tech mic carries signals straight to the brain, skipping the sensitive hairs of the inner ear which process regular hearing.

The treatment is often used to restore a sense of hearing to those who were seriously impaired. 

Chris's sense of hearing gradually faded away after he worked industrial jobs as a youth without using ear protectors.

He could still hear some low sounds but couldn't hear higher pitches or understand most speech, until the implant switch-on last year.

Partway through the video, he stops to describe his experience once he is more used to the implant.

Referring to the moment he first understood the sound of his own voice, he said: 'It was great, I couldn't hear you and couldn't hear me.

'Like a robot': He compared the digitised sounds the implant was feeding into his nervous system to robots from Doctor Who

'Every time I spoke it was just different keyboard keys. And then all of I sudden I just clicked - and my voice - but it was a perfect, digital robot.'

Other noises came as a shock too - when his doctor made a 'sshhh' sound, he clutched his ear in surprise at the high pitch.

He also surprised himself by tapping on a desk, saying 'holy flip!' when he realised he could hear the sound.

Chris, a teacher, then wryly observes that his students will have a harder time doing anything behind his back now that he can hear. 

Other users of the cochlear implant have compared the sound of voices to Daleks in Doctor Who, or speaking to somebody with laryngitis.

After time most users find that voices sound more natural. Writing long after the switch-on, Chris said: 'When the implant was first activated I could hear nothing but digital noises which I later realized were all the words people were saying.

'That's what became the robot sounds I could hear. It has now been about five months since activation and things sound very normal.

'It is still like listening through a speaker a bit, but everything sounds pretty normal. It is spring now and I am hearing birds for the first time in 20 years.

'I can hear each separate bird and different species, their calls sound very natural even when far away. I am always amazed at how sensitive the mics are'.