Oticon’s New ConnectLine Microphone Completes End-To-End Connection Between Hearing Aids And Your Conversation Partner

Oticon’s ConnectLine communication devices have made it easier for users of hearing aids to listen to their Apple iPods and personal MP3 players, their TVs, and their Bluetooth mobile phones for a while now. But with yesterday’s introduction of the Oticon ConnectLine personal microphone, you’ll finally be able to hear your dinner companion as well, even in a noisy restaurant.

The new wireless Oticon ConnectLine Microphone clips to your conversation partner’s lapel and picks up his or her voice while filtering out unwanted background sounds. It transmits the audio directly to the ConnectLine Streamer, which you wear on a loop around your neck, and the streamer transmits the unadulterated audio signals directly into your Oticon Agil hearing aids. It can also be adjusted to transmit at frequencies most compatible with the listener’s hearing-loss profile and hearing aids.

Ever since the big hearing aid makers began incorporating communication receivers directly into hearing aids, there’s been a not-so-quiet revolution in people’s ability to connect to more of the sounds of the modern world. But strangely enough, it’s taken some time for the major manufacturers to come up with workable assistive-listening solutions for the most common complaint of hearing-aid wearers–comprehension of speech in noisy surroundings. The ConnectLine Microphone is one approach to the speech-in-noise problem that is small and easy enough to actually be useful in the real world. When you add to the Oticon ConnectLine solutions for your TV, phone and personal listening system, you end up with a complete, end-to-end listening and comprehension system. Read more

Peltor Headset Communicates Safely Even In Noisiest Environments

A tree came down in our yard this week prompting a visit from our treeman, Conor Gleeson. Something was different this time: in addition to their usual safety helmets, Conor and his crew each were sporting a pair of bulky two-way communication headphones. Read more

Phonak Aims Its Colorful New Audeo Hearing Aids At Aging Hipsters

There’s a marketing bug going around the hearing-aid industry. First Oticon caught it with its Delta hearing aids, whose array of pop colors would have made Andy Warhol proud. Now Phonak has caught the bug with its Audeo hearing aids, which come in 15 hues ranging from “Crème Brule” (brown) to “Pinot Noir” (crimson) to “Pure Passion” (red) to “Green with Envy” (light green). Read more

Oticon Integrates Wireless Bluetooth Receiver In New Epoq Hearing Aids

Oticon’s latest new technology is whiz bang, integrating a Bluetooth receiver inside its new Epoq family of hearing aids. Epoq also provides wireless binaural communication between right and left hearing aids to make stereophonic sound more natural. But to me the most exciting innovation is the integrated Bluetooth, which enables mobile phone reception directly by the hearing aids. Read more

Buy Or Build? Starkey Turns Semiconductor Design Over To AMI

Buy or build? That’s a question that always confronts system manufacturers. It makes sense to buy standard components, but you want to own the designs for components that give your product a performance edge. Starkey Laboratories has answered the question about a major component in its hearing aids by selling its chip design group to AMI Semiconductor, Inc., which produces DSP chips for a number of hearing aid manufacturers around the world. Read more

Introducing The Long-Awaited Convergence Of Hearing Aids And Consumer Electronics

Paul Dybala, Ph.D., the editor of both Audiology Online and Healthy Hearing, has filed a wonderful, comprehensive report on the convergence of hearing aids and the wave of consumer earpieces and headsets being marketed by cellphone makers and consumer electronics companies. In 1999, Dr. Dybala was among the first to predict the mainstreaming of ear-level hearing-assistance technology in the form of “Ear-Level Voice-Activated Systems” (ELVAS). Now he is declaring that “Elvas Lives.” Read more

London “Hearwear” Exhibit Shows Off High-Fashion Hearing-Aid Designs

A group of collaborators in the UK is bringing high fashion to hearing aids with an upcoming exhibit at one of the world’s leading museums for design, the Victoria & Albert (V&A) in London. Hearwear — The Future of Hearing, which opens tomorrow, is the brainchild of the UK’s largest organization for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, RNID (formerly the Royal National Institute for the Deaf). Read more

Bluetooth Hearing-Aid Products Debut

Starkey Laboratories announced its Bluetooth Eli (Ear-Level Instrument) last week in a news release on the Advance for Audiologists website. Read more

Bluetooth Bandwagon Builds Momentum, But Where Are The HOH Products?

Every week it seems we hear of another new product for hard-of-hearing (HOH) consumers utilizing the Bluetooth wireless communications standard. In addition to my post last month on Sound ID, I’ve recently discovered that Starkey Laboratories, Micro-Tech Hearing Instruments, Sonomax Hearing Healthcare, and Gennum Corp. are also getting into the act. And I’m sure there are more. My only comment on all these efforts is, “Sounds great, guys, but when will we actually see (and hear) the products?” Read more