With the first shipments of its new super-power Endura behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids this month, Sonic Innovations is providing a satisfying high-end bookend to its line of hearing aids spanning the needs of all users.
The market for hearing aids for patients with severe-to-profound hearing loss is smaller than the markets for patients with mild-to-moderate hearing impairments, and sometimes manufacturers’ high-end product lines lack the bells and whistles available to their mainstream customers. But features such as adaptive directional microphones, Bluetooth capability, multiple programs for different listening environments and the latest and greatest feedback cancellation and noise-reduction algorithms are just as if not more important to people with severe hearing impairments as they are to those with more moderate hearing loss.
Sonic Innovations Endura hearing aids provide a maximum gain of 140 decibels, enough power to fit even the most profound hearing loss. They provide adaptive and automatic directional microphones and utilizes the company’s latest “Sonic Sound” digital sound processing software. They also feature integrated Direct Audio Input (DAI) for external personal sound amplifiers, cell phones, MP3 players and other devices. Because DAI provides a hard-wired connection rather than the wireless connection through a telecoil favored by many mainstream hearing aid systems, it can provide a more reliable signal that provides a welcome improvement in comprehension to severely impaired users who need as clear and undistorted audio as possible.
“With the addition of Endura to our family of products, we offer high quality, cutting-edge products for people with all levels of hearing loss,” said Sonic Innovations CEO Sam Westover.
The Endura family rounds out a line of hearing aids that also includes Sonic Innovations Touch, a receiver-in-the-canal product, Velocity, and open-ear “ion” hearing aids. The Touch microRIC was recently named as the Best of Innovations Design and Engineering Awards winner at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show.
Sonic Innovations’ parent company Otix Global Inc. is banking on new products to turn around a slump in sales it attributes to the recession and to legislative changes in Germany that impeded sales there. Annual sales fell by 23.3 percent in the year ended Dec. 31, 2009 over 2008, but the trend improved somewhat in the first fiscal quarter of 2010 with a 15 percent sales decline over the same period in the previous year.