Dipl.-Ing. Marc Aubreville, Erlangen
Video 11 2017
“Intelligent, seamless integration of external technologies into the universal program”
The introduction of Bluetooth in hearing devices has provided a number of options to make the hearing instrument smarter. Apart from audio signals, environment information such as the motion profile of the wearer can be transmitted to the hearing aid. This permits, for instance, automatic adjustment of the directional profile of the system in a way that increases the availability of spatial cues of the acoustic environment, thus improving orientation.
The seamless integration of the smartphone into the universal hearing program provides another strong advantage: streaming signals can be faded in instantaneously, without the need to switch hearing programs, a task that would introduce delay before the stream can start. Navigation announcements or other short audio signals as well as the beginning of a phone call could be partially or completely lost. After streaming has ended, it is also important to be able to hear all the surrounding sounds again, and be immediately responsive.