Brand Profile: Siemens Hearing Aids
Since 1878, when Werner Von Siemens developed the Phonophor amplified telephone, Siemens has been a leader in developing hearing aids and other solutions for better hearing. Today, with headquarters in the U.S. and Germany, Siemens Hearing Instruments is one of the world’s largest suppliers of hearing aids.
Siemens Hearing Instruments was an early leader in delivering binaural wireless communication between both left and right hearing aids, providing a more balanced and holistic rendering of the listening environment enabling better speech comprehension and localization of sound. In 2010 it added its BestSound technology to its hearing aids, including advances in three areas:
In October 2012, Siemens introduced its next-generation Micon technology platform, driven by a microprocessor chip with twice the power of previous Siemens hearing-aid sound processing systems. The new processor executes 250 million instructions per second, enabling 48 channels of amplification in Siemens hearing aids.
The Micon technology is integrated in the new Siemens Ace hearing-aid family as well as new versions of the current Siemens Pure, Life and Aquaris hearing aid families.
The new hearing aids also include Siemens BestSound technology, with a focus on three key features:
- SpeechFocus technology continuously analyzes the environment for the most favorable speech-to-noise ratio, and automatically selects the microphone configuration which has the potential to offer the best speech intelligibility for the user, regardless of whether speech is coming from the front, behind, or the side.
- FeedbackStopper facilitates feedback suppression by combining Siemens’ proven Acoustic Fingerprint Technology with a new Transient Frequency Shift, eliminating feedback before it is even noticed by the user.
- SoundLearning 2.0 is a sophisticated learning algorithm that adapts to the user’s individual hearing profile and preferences. Automatically steered by an intelligent acoustic situation detector, SoundLearning 2.0 allows the user to teach preferred gain, compression, and frequency shape independently for various acoustic situations.
In 2010, Siemens corporation considered divesting its hearing-aid business, initiating an auction that attracted interest from private equity concerns as well as several other major hearing-aid manufacturers. But instead it made a strategic decision to reverse course and re-commit to the hearing-aid business by keeping Siemens Hearing Instruments as a major independent Siemens business.