Signia’s Revolutionary YourSound Technology Explained

The limits of conventional hearing aids

Conventional hearing aids classify sounds in order to adapt their settings. You can imagine this like placing different soundscapes into different buckets, such as speech in noise, speech in quiet, noise, music etc. Based on this classification, the hearing aids search for the right response, for example directionality, frequency response, compression, or noise reduction. Until now, hearing aids assumed everyone in the same situation had the same hearing need. But one classification doesn’t cover different needs.

YourSound technology delivers the most natural and personalized sound

With YourSound technology, Signia Xperience is able to understand and adapt to the environment without assigning it to a pre-defined class. And for the first time ever, the wearer’s motion is taken into consideration in every situation. Our advanced acoustic sensors and newly integrated motion sensor can detect more variables from the environment than ever before.

This means our new Signia Xperience hearing aids understand where the wearer is and what he or she is doing at all times. YourSound technology’s Dynamic Soundscape Processing delivers natural sound and speech in every situation, even when moving. And its Own Voice Processing ensures a natural-sounding own voice. The result: our hearing aids can predict and highlight what truly matters to people in every situation.

Why motion matters

A moderately active person will have walked the equivalent of about five lengths of the equator by the time they’re 80. Hearing aid wearers are not passive observers of their surroundings. The environment changes all the time as they move and interact within it. For hearing aids to always adapt correctly, the sound processing needs to be able to separate similar but different scenarios based on what the wearer is doing, to provide the correct support.

The new motion sensor detects whether the hearing aid wearer is walking, running or not. This is a crucial part for Signia Xperience to understand how the wearer interacts within his or her environment. For example, Dynamic Soundscape Processing provides more directionality and noise reduction when a patient is sitting in a restaurant with a friend because frontal speech is most important. It then relaxes these features when the wearer gets up to walk through the same restaurant, so the entire soundscape is audible.

YourSound technology reduces listening effort

The new Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) function analyzes the dominant speech signal in comparison to the competing noise in the environment. With a better understanding of the SNR, Signia Xperience hearing aids can determine if strong directionality and noise suppression is required as in the case of a poor SNR, or if the wearer will have better performance with a less aggressive noise management system when the SNR is favorable.

Dynamic Soundscape Processing can calculate the ratio between the ambient sound level and the relevant speech, even in low noise environments. In every situation, our new technology optimizes speech intelligibility and reduces listening effort.

YourSound technology provides stable sound even in dynamic situations

Also new, the Ambient Modulation function identifies if the envelope of the competing signal is highly modulated such as speech, or a low modulation such as a fan. With this information, the new hearing aids can better determine how speech and noise management should address the competing signals.

Dynamic Soundscape Processing attenuates unwanted sound sources while it maintains psychoacoustic principals, so that the surroundings always sound natural. By providing more access to sounds in the environment, YourSound Technology improves situational awareness without compromising on speech intelligibility.

YourSound technology detects relevant speech from every direction

The new directional processing system, Front / Back Detection, analyzes the direction of both speech and noise signals. It can adjust the attenuation to be more or less pronounced in any angle and allows for a binaurally equal and synchronized attenuation not previously possible.

Dynamic Soundscape Processing identifies the direction of speech and noise signals and provides better input for determining directional microphone strength in combination with environmental awareness. As a result, Signia Xperience allows the wearer to focus on speech from every direction.

YourSound technology produces a natural-sounding own voice for highest acceptance

In addition to all these seminal new technologies, our proven Own Voice Processing (OVP) remains the world’s first and only system to process the own voice completely independently from all other sounds for the most natural hearing experience. OVP scans the wearer’s head with highly precise microphones to identify the wearer’s own voice reliably due to its unique spatial sound path. In this way, Signia Xperience allows the wearer to experience a natural-sounding own voice and improves spontaneous acceptance of own voice by 80% of dissatisfied hearing aid wearers.*

Contact your Signia sales representative today for more information about our revolutionary Signia Xperience platform with YourSound technology – for the most natural and personalized hearing experience.

* 2017 “OVP Study” conducted at University of Northern Colorado examining the effect of own voice processing on spontaneous acceptance after first fit of hearing aids.