Signia unveils revolutionary hearing aid platform Augmented Xperience

Hearing isn’t always easy. A big group of people talking at the same time, softly spoken talkers, too much background noise… Sometimes things blend into a soup of sounds making it impossible for your clients to focus on what they want to hear.

Created 04 May 2021 Updated 04 May 2021

Hearing aid technology

Our new platform Augmented Xperience changes the way your clients hear the world. Instead of them having to strain to discern speech from background noise, our new platform uses proprietary Augmented Focus™ technology to process the two separately and create a clear contrast. It then recombines them to deliver outstanding speech clarity in a fully immersive soundscape.

Traditionally, hearing aids have processed all sounds under one set of rules. The problem with only having one processor is that all signals are competing against each other. If you prioritize one part, another is neglected. With Augmented Xperience, two dedicated processors can fully optimize different parts without compromising one or the other. It shapes the sound of speech and surroundings in a way that delivers outstanding speech clarity while making surroundings sound enjoyable.

Revolutionary split processing

Augmented Focus consists of two independent processors working in parallel with dedicated tasks

Focus sounds

Focus sounds carry relevant information where every small detail is important, for example the speech of a conversation partner. These sounds are processed in a highly linear, uncompressed way with emphasis on clarity and details. This pulls speech closer to the listener, so it sounds as clear as possible.

Surroundings

Surroundings contain all sounds outside the main focus placing the wearer in the correct acoustic atmosphere. This is important to create both awareness and excitement, for example enjoying piano music and laughter in a cafe. These sounds are processed with high spatial resolution, applying more compression and attenuation to keep them at a distance from the focus sounds. Sudden loud sounds can be addressed more quickly than ever before to prevent them from masking focus sounds.

Augmenting reality in the wearer's favor

Two separate processors allow us to fully capture focus and surroundings independently. As a result, we can control how we recombine them. To create a greater contrast, Augmented Focus pulls focus sounds closer and places surroundings a bit further away. This augments reality in the wearer's favor.

Experience a range of audiological innovations

A range of innovative technologies combine to deliver this unprecedent augmented hearing experience:

e2e wireless 4.0 – A great leap for true binaural hearing

Our new ear-to-ear (e2e) system e2e 4.0 syncs more binaural audio data than ever, ensuring clearer speech processing and high-precision directional awareness. It also significantly boosts the speed of data transmission, delivering a much smoother sound experience and inaudible shifts between different settings. Latency is reduced by 60% so that transitions between different modes are no longer audible.

TruEar 360

The powerful processing engine allows for an exceptional TruEar 360 mic mode that reproduces and emphasizes the capabilities of the natural pinna-effect better than ever. TruEar 360 highlights the difference between front and back sources of sound to make localization of sound sources easier.

Increased input dynamic range

The microphones and the state-of-the-art analogue input stage can handle signals up to 117dB with great sound quality. That’s very close to the full capacity of human ears and ensures a clean crisp signal, for example at music concerts.

Own Voice Processing (OVP)

OVP processes the wearer’s own voice completely independently from all other sounds, including all other voices. This allows you to fine-tune the hearing aids for optimal audibility of the entire acoustic environment without having to compromise this audibility to improve the sound quality of the wearer’s own voice.

Enhanced feedback cancellation

e2e 4.0 also synchronizes feedback cancellation between the ears in the same phase, removing more artifacts for a smoother overall sound experience.

Direct streaming for iOS and Android

Augmented Xperience offers direct streaming for both iOS and ASHA-compatible Android smartphones. It handles the signal of a streaming input independently from other signals, ensuring that the sound is even clearer and easier to optimize.

Our new platform is available in two exciting RICs: Pure Charge&Go AX and Pure Charge&Go T AX with an integrated T-coil.