Phonak Spices Up Its New Ambra And Audeo S Hearing Aids With A Next-Generation Digital Signal Processing Platform

Worldwide hearing-aid market leader Phonak is rolling out its new Ambra and Audeo S families of hearing aids based on its “Spice Generation” sound processing and fitting platform. At the heart of the new platform is the new Spice digital signal processing (DSP) chipset, which has twice the processing power, is twice as fast and has three times the memory than the company’s previous DSP platform. The Spice Generation platform also enables smaller form factors, which the company calls “CountourDesign,” and it comes with a new “Target” software system to make it easier for audiologists to program the new hearing aids to more exactly meet their patients’ needs.

The company calls its new Phonak Ambra hearing aid family “the premium flagship of the Phonak Spice Generation.” It features true binaural communication between both hearing aids in a set, enabling users to more easily locate sound and hear better in challenging listening environments, “adaptive intelligence” which personalizes the hearing instrument by enabling it to adapt to the users’ environment, and a smaller, more elegant design. Among other things, binaural communication enables a “DuoPhone” feature which allows the user to have phone conversations streamed to both ears simultaneously for better telephone comprehension. Binaural communications also enables “StereoZoom,” which creates a bi-directional network of four telephones from two hearing instruments to locate sound and focus on a single speaker while suppressing other sounds, and “auto ZoomControl” which automatically determines where the dominant voice is in the room and focuses on it.

In addition to superior next-generation performance, the Ambra hearing aids are 20 to 30 percent smaller than Phonak’s earlier Exelia models. They are available in all form factors, including both behind-the-ear (BTE) and custom in-the-ear formats.

The Audeo S hearing aids, also based on the Spice Generation platform, are the next generation of Phonak’s popular Audeo tiny open-fit, behind-the-ear products with speaker-in-the-ear — or as the company puts it, “canal-receiver technology” (CRT). The Audeo S aids come in three Model versions at three performance and price levels. Audeo S MINI is the standard performance level, Audeo S SMART offer power performance, and Audeo S YES offers super-power performance. Because of improved feedback canceling and noise suppression, the super-power model widens the fitting range of the open-fit products to extend into severe-hearing-loss territory. According to a presentation at the EUHA (International Union of Hearing Aid Acousticians) conference last October by Valentin Chapero, CEO of Phonak’s corporate parent Sonova Group, the market for CRT’s is growing faster than any other kind of hearing aid.

Two Cheers For On Semiconductor’s Acquisition Of Hearing-Aid Chip Maker Sound Design Technologies

On Semiconductor’s recent acquisition of Sound Design Technologies reduces the number of independent manufacturers of digital signal processor (DSP) chips for hearing aids, lessening competition in an industry that is already highly concentrated. Less competition is not a good thing over the long run, because when fewer manufacturers control a market, they can charge higher prices for the products they’ve already built. They can also invest less in new technology innovations because there are fewer competitors out there likely to leapfrog them. However, over the short term, On Semiconductor’s acquisition acquisition of Sound Design may actually be a very good thing for the hearing industry. Here’s why.

Ever since Sound Design spun out of Canadian semiconductor maker Gennum several years ago, it has been the only independent DSP chip manufacturer focused on the hearing aid market. Many hearing-aid manufacturers who do not design and build their own chips use Sound Design’s chips to power their hearing aids. DSPs are specialized semiconductor products whose hearing-aid manufacturer customers expect lower costs and higher performance every year along with more miniaturization and special features. DSPs allow hearing-aid makers to provide better feedback canceling capability, automatic adjustment to different listening environments, automatic adjustment of directional microphones, wireless communication between left and right hearing aids to provide better hearing “in stereo,” Bluetooth integration, and numerous other features that have dramatically improved digital hearing aids in recent years.

Sound Design’s new Wolverine DSP is a high-performance digital engine for hearing aids that is smaller than earlier DSPs, consumes less power, delivers more processing capability and enables easier and more flexible development and deployment of custom sound-processing algorithms and special applications by hearing-aid manufacturers. Clearly the company’s focus on the hearing-aid market has paid off.

But chip design, manufacturing and distribution is a highly capital-intensive business, and Sound Design on its own was nowhere near as large as many of the semiconductor companies it would have to compete against. Without being able to achieve economies of scale from a manufacturing operation selling a lot of products, it’s hard for a chip company to keep costs as low as customers want.

Therefore being acquired should enable Sound Design to leverage On Semiconductor’s mass-production capabilities to keep costs down. It will also be able to tap On Semiconductor’s deep bench of designers with extensive experience developing power and signal management semiconductors, logic chips, discrete components and custom devices — all of which can be applied to next-generation hearing-aid DSPs. That’s a benefit to hearing-aid manufacturers, who need to continue integrating all kinds of new capabilities into ever-smaller form factors. On Semiconductor spun out of Motorola several years ago and is now a leading publicly held semiconductor company with nearly $2 billion (USD) in annual revenue, so it’s got all the resources a small manufacturer of hearing-aid DSPs should need. If it allows Sound Design’s team of executives to continue focusing as relentlessly on the hearing-aid market as they have in the past, the acquisition could be a win-win-win for On Semiconductor, Sound Design, hearing-aid manufacturers who depend on them, and hearing-aid users who will continue to benefit from new technologies and better performance at lower costs.

However, that’s a big “if.” 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

And Then There Were Six: GN Store Nord Puts GN ReSound On The Block

I wrote about the “seven sisters” of the global hearing aid industry a while ago, but now it appears there will be six. Consolidation among the largest manufacturers continues as GN Store Nord considers selling GN ReSound, the world’s third-largest hearing-aid brand, to one of the other majors. 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

Invisible CIC Hearing Aids, High-Fashion Italian Designer Shoes, And Me

Buying a pair of hearing aids can be like shopping for a new pair of expensive designer shoes: you’ve got to get exactly the right fit; they have to be sturdy and comfortable enough to wear all day; but you want them to look really good as well. It’s not an easy combination, especially the part about looking good. Read more

In Memoriam: Jack Kilby Made Today’s Hearing Aids Possible

It’s a little-known fact that Jack Kilby, the inventor of the microchip, was also a hearing-aid pioneer. The Texas Instruments engineer and Nobel Prize winner’s death yesterday at the age of 81 has spurred a slew of stories about the invention of the integrated circuit and the dawn of the computer age. Read more