Articles

To test the wearers’ experience of Signia AX in real-world listening situations, an international survey was done in which respondents were fitted with Signia AX devices and then assessed the devices in their everyday life and compared the performance to that provided by their own hearing aids. In this white paper, we present preliminary data from the US part of the survey. The data indicate high levels of satisfaction with AX in a variety of listening situations and a clear preference for AX over the respondents’ own hearing aids.

Due to the restrictions dictated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a fully remote study of Signia AX was done in collaboration with Hörzentrum Oldenburg in Germany, involving both fitting and assessment of Signia AX being done in the participants’ own homes. The results showed high levels of immediate satisfaction with AX just after the fitting, and in an at-home speech-in-noise test, the new Augmented Focus processing allowed the participants to perform significantly better with AX than with their own hearing aids.

In a study at the University of Northern Colorado, the performance of Signia AX was tested in challenging communication situations simulated in the lab. The results showed that activation of the new Augmented Focus processing significantly improved the participants’ ability to understand speech in a restaurant scenario. Furthermore, the speech-understanding performance exceeded that offered by two main competitors and was on par with the performance of a normal-hearing reference group. In a simulated party scenario, the performance with AX was even better than normal-hearing performance when binaural beamforming was activated.

The white paper discuss important aspects of fitting hearing aids to people with severe to profound hearing loss in general, and specifically highlights the new features in Signia Motion C&G SP X supporting and innovating this field, also supported by study results.

A survey of 56 hearing aid users compared users’ satisfaction between Xperience and their own hearing aids, showing higher satisfaction ratings for Xperience across the board. The advantage for Xperience was especially pronounced for listening situations where the integrated acoustic-motion sensors, advanced directionality and noise reduction of the Xperience instruments help users lead their lives. These satisfaction ratings are compared to norms from MarkeTrak and EuroTrak, showing that even though hearing aid satisfaction is generally quite high, the Xperience instruments stand out.

The use of masks and increased distancing while talking because of the coronavirus pandemic is a unique challenge that can be very frustrating even for people with normal hearing. But for the hard of hearing it can prove especially difficult. Signia offers flexible solutions for you as a Hearing Care Professional (HCP) to optimize speech intelligibility in this “new normal” world. This new audiology bulletin explains the adverse effects of masks and social distancing on speech understanding and how HCPs can improve their clients’ hearing experience with the right advice and program settings in Connexx.

Times are changing and the need for new tools to provide support has never been higher. The Signia Assistant is founded on over 130 years of audiological experience and trust in the hearing care professional. Build on the Artificial Intelligence technology Neural Networks, it’s able to identify which adjustment suits the current environment best, based on both global and individual learning. For the user it means they can tailor their sound to meet their everyday situation, for the HCP it means a completely new insight tool into their wearer’s real world experience and use of the hearing aids. Relevant for the special situation we’re facing globally: The Assistant is also able to support with handling and troubleshooting and can act as the extended arm of the HCP. In this white paper, the Assistant is put to the test. Let’s see how it performs is real world user studies.

This paper describes in detail how to use the Signia Assistant, both in the Signia App and in Connexx for Hearing Care Professionals.

The StreamLine Mic from Signia is a versatile Bluetooth streaming device and remote microphone all in one. Its Bluetooth functionality allows it to pair to multiple Bluetooth enabled devices including Android and iOS (Apple) devices. And the remote microphone capabilities help make even though most difficult listening situations easier to manage. This white paper examines advantages and the performance of the StreamLine Mic

Options to offer services and solutions based on electronic processes and communication have in recent years been increasingly explored within the entire healthcare industry. Depending on the specific processes and technologies involved, such solutions are often referred to using umbrella terms like eHealth, mHealth, connected health, telemedicine or telehealth, but more field-specific terms have also been introduced.

Audiology Online

Since its introduction with the binax platform in 2014, Signia’s Narrow Directionality has been the industry leader in optimizing speech understanding in background noise. The purpose of the current research was to ensure that the Narrow Directionality feature of the Xperience was equal to that of the Nx model—previous research has shown that the speech-in-noise processing of the Nx is superior to that of premier models from competitive manufacturers. Indeed, the results of this research revealed that there was no difference in the speech recognition findings for the two different instruments. This allows us to reasonably assume that Xperience also is superior to the competition for these important listening conditions. For those who were questioning if it is possible to obtain excellent soundscape processing for speech, while still maintaining a high level of narrow directionality, the answer is yes.

Canadian Audiologist, VOL. 6 • ISSUE 6 • 2019

Signia Xperience devices take a significant step towards adapting to the listening intent of the wearer. YourSound technology is the realization of this comprehensive approach, consisting of the sensory analysis layer provided by Acoustic-Motion Sensors, the processing of environmental sounds in the Dynamic Soundscape Processing, and the Own Voice Processing to process the microphone input as soon as the system detects that the wearer is speaking. This article provides insights into the different components of YourSound technology.

It is important that the design of hearing aid processing closely resembles the listening intent of the user. This has been enhanced with the Signia Xperience, which utilizes new acoustic and motion sensors, serving to improve speech understanding and the acoustic sound scape. Laboratory data shows significantly better speech understanding for speech from the sides, both when stationary and when moving. Real-world studies using EMA methodology revealed highly satisfactory environmental awareness, and higher overall user satisfaction ratings than have been obtained for either EuroTrak, or the recent MarkeTrak10. Overall, for both efficacy and effectiveness, the performance of the Signia Xperience hearing aids was validated, and increased patient benefit and satisfaction is expected to follow.

The Hearing Review, November 7, 2019

This study demonstrates the benefit of partial masking, encouraging patients to seek help from audiologists interested in providing support for tinnitus patients. Thirty-three percent of our participants with bothersome tinnitus benefited from maskers provided through Signia instruments without any counseling whatsoever. Within that responsive group, 38–75% of them experienced improved quality of life in the domains of thoughts and emotions, sleep, concentration, and hearing.

Jun 14, 2019

A large portion of individuals with dementia also have hearing loss. When these patients are fitted with hearing aids for the first time, the use and operation of the instruments can be a struggle, and the struggle often carries over to their caregivers. This research found that the use of teleaudiology via Signia TeleCare for these new hearing aid users increased awareness, improved benefit for several different communication settings, and reduced associated stress for the caregivers.

May 21, 2019

Premier hearing aid products from three leading manufacturers were placed in head-to-head competition to assess key benefits for the wearer. For the speech recognition measures, the Signia product was significantly superior, and this was true for three different background noise conditions. Subjective judgements for different attributes of the listening experience were equal for the three products, suggesting that superior speech understanding can be achieved without causing negative effects regarding the acoustic environment.

VOL. 6 • ISSUE 4 • 2019

One of the main concerns of Hearing Care Professionals (HCPs) who are fitting and dispensing hearing aids is knowing how to achieve excellence in patient service. A study involving 88 HCPs and more than 5600 first time users revealed the benefit of Signia TeleCare in creating higher hearing aid adoption rates with patients. The use of TeleCare was also found to result in high user satisfaction ratings in all the most relevant hearing situations for the individuals. The findings showed that a careful and consistent implementation as part of the HCP’s patient care workflow was key to leverage the remote care potentials provided by Signia TeleCare.

Today’s hearing aid fitting and counseling session should extend beyond the traditional hearing aid fitting & counseling protocol, in order to ensure user satisfaction in daily life right from the start. Exploring the benefits of Bluetooth technology and counseling regarding realistic expectations should therefore be routinely provided prior to leaving the Hearing Care Professional’s office. The paper gives detailed guidance how to conduct such an assessment for all manufacturer’s Bluetooth hearing aids, with further tips for Signia products utilizing manufacturer specific tools and features.

Few manufacturers offer technology that incorporates both bilateral full-audio sharing of signals as well as direct streaming from a mobile device. In a comparative research project, the effectiveness of the streaming for such hearing aids was evaluated. The findings reveal a crucial difference between streaming indoors and outdoors, which is important to consider when counseling patients. Results show a substantial streaming advantage for the Signia product, and indicate that a Bluetooth based wireless approach as applied by the competitor brand does not deliver on all basic user needs.

In an AmpCROS or TriCROS set-up, the aid on the poorer hearing side picks up the sound, amplifies it, and delivers it to both ears. The aid on the better hearing ear receives an amplified signal from the contralateral side and combines it with the ipsilateral signal. This short guide shows you how to use Signia NxTM instruments for an AmpCROS fitting.

Our goal at Signia has always been to allow our patients to live their lives to the fullest despite hearing loss. Therefore, we develop hearing solutions designed to ease and facilitate communication in a variety of listening situations. This paper describes several of our advanced features on the Nx platform and corresponding studies that demonstrate clinically proven benefit to patients.

This Hearing Review article presents a study which demonstrates that the two new CROS/BiCROS systems from Signia—Pure 312 Nx CROS with Narrow directionality and Silk Nx CROS—provide a superior solution to the daily listening problems encountered by people with single-sided deafness (SSD).

Hearing Review

It’s debatable whether a computer will ever “think” in the same way that the human brain does, but machines’ abilities to see, understand, and interact are changing our lives. It is no surprise then, that in the past few years we have seen mention of machine learning in hearing aid trade journal articles. But are machine learning hearing aids really something new?

In a real-world field study, the Hearing Profile was shown to be a valuable tool for hearing care professionals, not only by providing an individualized first fit with an appropriate target prescription, but also a means to leverage the cooperation between professionals and patients which results in improved fitting success.

AudiologyOnline

The latest study shows that the streaming audio quality of the Signia Nx ITC instruments have achieved “best-in-class” audio streaming as compared to the only competitive custom streaming device.

Canadian Audiologist

How do we know that Styletto is an industry game-changer that will attract new wearers who would never have considered hearing aids before? We asked them! Read this paper to learn more.

This clinical study shows that AutoFit is both valid and reliable, and can be an efficient and useful tool in the verification of the hearing aid fitting via the new IMC2 standard.

Hearing Review

Patients with SSD often experience significant problems with speech understanding in daily listening situations where noise is a factor. The results of this study demonstrate that the two latest CROS/BiCROS solutions offered by Signia, the Pure 312 Nx CROS with Narrow Directionality and the Silk Nx CROS, provide clear and significant speech intelligibility benefits for users in challenging listening environments.

AutoFit™ is a beneficial feature in the Connexx™ Fitting Application that automatically provides the Hearing Care Professional (HCP) with an optimized real-ear insertion gain (REIG) setting without the need for the HCP to manually match targets. This paper describes how to perform quick match-to-target fittings using AutoFit from Connexx Version 8.5 onwards.

How does Pure Charge&Go stack up against leading competitor hearing aids? A study was conducted in April 2018 with 100 participants to find out.

OVP improves the perception of the the wearer's own voice, but did you know that a recent study shows that it also has wearers participating more in communication settings?

Hearing Review

At first glance, a tiny hearing aid and a self-driving car don’t have much in common. However, on a technological level there are a couple of similarities: self driving cars use a variety of sensors to collect real-time information about the environment such as GPS, optical cameras, specialised radar, and accelerometers.

An increasing number of wearers are relying on Bluetooth to stream phone calls to their hearing aids. Some options on the market which feature streaming to both ears contend that the bilateral signal fosters better speech intelligibility, but is this supported by research evidence, or just conjecture?

We have been taught that the occlusion effect often is the culprit in own voice issues, so why is it that with the prevalence of open fittings, patient dissatisfaction with the sound of their own voice is still an obstacle to hearing aid acceptance?

This Hearing Review publication reports on a study which uses three tests to evaluate the various aspects of hearing aid performance directly affected by the FBC: Aided Gain Before Feedback, Max-REIG, and a sound quality evaluation using Multi-Stimulus Test with Hidden Reference and Anchor (MUSHRA). Considering all potential trade-offs, the Signia FBC can be considered a best-in-class algorithm in this multifaceted benchmark analysis.

Hearing Review

A study conducted at the University of Northern Colorado shows that OVP is appropriate for both open and closed fittings, and for different fitting rationales.

AudiologyOnline

Connectivity is undoubtedly one of the most im-portant topics in the hearing aid industry today. While most people immediately associate the word connectivity with being able to link their hearing aids with electronic devices such as smartphones, in a genuinely patient-centric hearing system the ap-plication of connectivity encompasses more than simply connecting to personal electronic devices.

This AudiologyOnline article describes Nx improvements in sound quality.

AudiologyOnline.com

Since the introduction of TeleCare, anonymous analytics data shows that there have been more than 150,000 patient-professional interactions around the world, including 5,000 remote tuning interactions. With this large amount of data available, valuable insights can be deduced to help hearing care professionals improve their service and business success. Learn what Signia TeleCare can do for your practice and what's new with version 3.0.

We have designed a new innovative ready-made ITE product called Silk. Along with this product is the introduction of especially designed click sleeves. This new product capitalizes on the successful components of the RIC fittings, so that similar patient benefits can be obtained with ITE products.

This Hearing Review publication describes how Own Voice Processing works and details study results validating its effectiveness.

Hearing Review

The myControl App 2.0 provides the wearer with a convenient way to control their Bluetooth direct-streaming hearing aids as well as to monitor their hearing performance closely. Here is how to use the app.

Signia Nx hearing aids solve the own voice issue with a sophisticated technological solution—a real-time detection of the wearer’s voice, combined with dedicated Own Voice Processing (OVP). To use OVP, the patient must perform a short customization procedure during the initial hearing aid fitting. Here is how to do it.

When working with Signia Nx Bluetooth hearing aids such as Pure Nx, TeleCare 3.0 turns the patient’s Apple or Android smartphone into a programming interface, and enables full remote programming functionality via Connexx. Here is how to do it.

A high level of sound quality is vital for new hearing aid wearers who have to adapt to hearing the world via an electronic device. This is especially important for the sound quality of the wearer’s own voice. Hearing care professionals often resolve own voice complaints by reducing amplification, with the unintended consequence of decreased speech intelligibility. With the new Signia Nx, this is no longer an issue—because of the revolutionary technology called Own Voice Processing (OVP).

Since the introduction of TeleCare, anonymous analytics data shows that there have been more than 150,000 patient-professional interactions around the world, including 5,000 remote tuning interactions. With this large amount of data available, valuable insights can be deduced to help hearing care professionals improve their service and business success. Learn what Signia TeleCare can do for your practice and what's new with version 3.0.

The myControl App 2.0 provides the wearer with a convenient way to control their Signia Bluetooth hearing aids according to their needs as well as to monitor their hearing performance closely.

While hearing aid users often wear their hearing aids for music listening, they are frequently dissatisfied with the sound quality of music. This AudiologyOnline article details a study which describes music sound quality ratings between the universal and music programs of five premier market hearing aids, and which hearing aid achieves the best overall sound quality ratings.

AudiologyOnline, August 2017

It has long been known that pure tone audiogram (PTA) measurements cannot fully account for the variation in speech intelligibility scores measured from hearing impaired listeners. With regard to hearing aid fittings, it is clear that there is no simple solution that would allow us to perform a consistently perfect customized fitting by even adding one additional variable to audiogram data. A transition from the “average” patient fitting towards a more individual fitting requires several stages. In this paper, these stages are described and explained, based on data obtained from several clinical studies.

AudiologyOnline

This Hearing Review publication reports that Signia OVP provides a substantial improvement in own-voice satisfaction, and that this improvement is present for different fitting strategies, and for different ear-canal couplings.

Hearing Review

Study shows that Signia Pure 13 BT consistently received the highest mean ratings compared to the average of the four competitor products. This advantage held true for five different genres of music and for a streamed mobile phone speech signal. Signia Pure 13 BT also was rated considerably higher than the other products regarding annoying artifacts.

Canadian Audiologist, Vol. 4, Issue 4, 2017

Listening to music is important for most hearing aid users, and, having a high quality signal is essential. Using the MUSHRA methodology, samples of music were rated for the premier instrument from four leading manufacturers. Data analysis revealed significantly higher ratings for Signia primax for both the universal program and for the music program. The superiority was present regardless of music genre, or whether the music sample was familiar or unfamiliar.

The second generation of TeleCare builds up on the success of TeleCare 1.0 to improve the link between the HCP and the user.

This video describes the easy Own Voice Processing (OVP™) activation procedure for your patient.

This video highlights the results of two clinical studies conducted with Signia's Own Voice Processing (OVP™) technology.