Signia Library

Hearing Review, January 12, 2023

This paper presents the outcome of a study investigating the Signia Augmented Xperience (AX) HandsFree for iOS and CallControl functionality that allows wearers to conduct hands-free phone calls.

Bluetooth enabled hearing aids with direct streaming functionality allow hearing aid wearers to hear a conversation partner on the phone directly via their hearing aids. Now, the new Signia AX HandsFree Mode enables iPhone users to make handsfree phone calls, eliminating the need to use the smartphone’s microphone to pick up the wearers voice.

Signia AX, introduced in 2021, is a significant departure from traditional signal processing found in other hearing aids, and it addresses the most common problem associated with hearing aid use: performance in background noise

Auto EchoShield in Signia Augmented Xperience (AX) hearing aids addresses the situation where a hearing aid wearer is present in a room with reverberation caused by multiple sound reflections (echoes) from the room surfaces, for example in a church or entrance hall.

Since its introduction, Own Voice Processing (OVP) has been a unique technology only offered by Signia, preserving the familiar sound of the hearing aid wearers’ natural own voice.

Recently, Signia introduced the AX platform of hearing aids to take the next step managing and augmenting the listening experience. The AX platform builds on former platforms, but also incorporates new approaches to processing. Part of the AX development was to look at how other industries approach sound and explore opportunities to expand on previous approaches.

Audiology Practices 13(4), 36-41.

To investigate the benefits of an AI assistant to support the individualization of hearing aid fittings, 58 hearing aid wearers were surveyed. The results showed Signia Assistant is perceived as easy to use and improves the fitting for individual wearers in difficult listening situations. Further, it increases the clinician’s ability to optimize the fitting more accurately to the individual and strengthens the provider-wearer relationship.

The Hearing Review, Nov 1 2021

The combination of acoustic and motion sensors provides the hearing aids with data to better optimize the hearing aid features in anticipation of the hearing aid user's listening needs.

Seminars in Hearing, September 24, 2021

Signia has a long track record of developing innovative amplification features that optimize wearer performance in all types of challenging listening situations. The goal of optimizing wearer performance across a range of divergent listening conditions was the main driver in the development of the Signia Augmented Xperience (AX) platform with the revolutionary Augmented Focus™ technology.

Audiology Online, September 1, 2021

Understanding the principles of our unique and patented Augmented Focus technology is easy, when the methods the brain uses to focus on sound inputs are considered.

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.