Most older hearing aids have only an omnidirectional microphone. An omnidirectional microphone amplifies sounds equally from all directions. In contrast, a directional microphone amplifies sounds from one direction more than sounds from other directions. This means that sounds originating from the direction the system is steered toward are amplified more than sounds coming from other directions. If the desired speech arrives from the direction of steering and the noise is from a different direction, then compared to an omnidirectional microphone, a directional microphone provides a better signal to noise ratio. Improving the signal-to-noise ratio improves speech understanding in noise. Directional microphones have been found to be the second best method to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (the best method was an FM system, which locates the microphone near the mouth of the desired talker).