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Signia MaX: Signia’s new flagship AI-powered platform

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No, it's an either/or because to do both would require two completely separate processing chains in a device and decades of independent development of features to work in both processing chains. Manufacturers made specific choices in their designs back in late 1990's early 2000's and have been building their technology patent portfolio on them for decades. To change now would require a complete rebuild from scratch.

Because it is based upon an area of brand new research first published in May of this year. It has been confirmed with four different brands so far. Other manufacturers will want to see greater validation which is why WSA is investing a lot of money into independent research on this topic. You're at the cutting edge hearing about it here.

The knowledge that there are strong preferences for one or another kind and that these are stable and related to whether a user persists with devices is new though. Widex uses temporal processing, everyone else uses spectral processing. There doesn't need to be a list.

Edited

In reply to @Bimodal_user

Because sounding better does not necessarily mean better for speech .

I think they created a space (niche) where they excel but, that space , is not for everyone.

It’s like a Porsche 911: fun, enjoyable but not necessarily the best option it you have kids.

For WS/aud : it probably makes sense to keep the two brands separate and let them focus on different spaces where they excel. And while Widex is not among the top three, WSaud is . Just like VW and Porsche.

In reply to @Bimodal_user

People have different needs and preferences. For many users Widex is the only option they'd pick, but others prefer a more enhanced sound. It's great that there are so many options available to fill different niche's.

In reply to @OcramSagev

For WS/aud : it probably makes sense to keep the two brands separate and let them focus on different spaces where they excel.

Exactly, Signia and Widex are different companies still and with totally different platforms on offer,it definitely makes sense,Widex is "niche" for sure, and I doubt they'll ever be a popular product.

Widex devices were the most popular products for a while in the early-mid 2000s. If 20% of users have a strong preference for temporal processing, that should give them a minimum 20% market share if people's preferences were being met. That's certainly enough to sustain a business.

They were and still only about 10% of the market, very few clinics ever offered them back in the day, the V4 software was horrible to use, they had/have oddball programming device and cables for the HiPro, only from the moment models onwards did they offer the Noahlink wireless,and now have their head stuck in the "clouds"

In reply to @Bimodal_user

, I am interested in the difference between temporal processing vs frequency processing, firstly because I did not understand it! It was referenced in a post by Hearing_Potential which I did not understand. I then googled it and found an academic paper that explained it. Someone several months ago posted a link to another video that included sound samples which the listener could choose between two types of hearing solutions, which if I recall were identified as "natural" and "processed". I realized after reading the academic paper that these two types were temporal and frequency processing. Lastly, I was curious about the new Signia MaX because Signia's parent company, WSA, is also Widex's parent company. I had assumed, in error, that both hearing aids from Signia and Widex, used the same type of sound processing. Which I now now is not the case.

Edited

In reply to @tenkan

At the same time Phonak and Resound were also around 10% of the global market. Siemens were the only company with more than 20% market share and there were a larger number of independent brands. Things may have been very different in the USA where Starkey was more dominant, but the idea that very few clinics offered Widex doesn’t fit the numbers.

Widex was a bit more popular in the mid 1990s. They sold over 100k Senso's, the first digital programmable device within 6 months of launch which was unheard of for a high-end premium device at the time. This is what raised them from a small family company to one of the big 6. Even at the time 13/20 users strongly preferred the Widex sound to Oticon's blockbuster digifocus product, the first with digital signal processing: also a breakthrough product.

@Hearing_Potential said:

Widex was a bit more popular in the mid 1990s. They sold over 100k Senso's, the first digital programmable device

Still have Senso P8 in my drawer 😅 My first , which I've got when I was 11-12yo. Previous proposed HAs were uncomfortable and has much feedback so I didn't use them, despite having hearing loss since 4yo (the same as now).

Signia MaX sounds great and I may try them soon but I remain skeptical from experience how much they'll really help. I've been wearing Signia for 27 years (since Prism) and the improvements over the years are significant but aside from streaming all the hyped up breakthrough technologies have never lived up to the Signia hype from my experience. AuX in my opinion is a good recent example that at best was a minor improvement and that might even be an exaggeration. To a large degree a lot of the supposed improvements over the years seems to have been more sophisticated use of compression that is nice when it works but tends to be troublesome in far too many edge situations. These edge cases are my concern with the MaX, at least initially as I'm sure it will improve with time. It does seem like a big change in technology that's headed in the right direction.

In reply to @Hearing_Potential

@Hearing_Potential said:

The DNN is trained on the output of a set of spatial near-field filters designed to distinguish between own voice and external speech from the front. This enables the DNN to differentiate between the wearer’s voice and the voices of other nearby talkers in front of the wearer. These filters are part of the preprocessing block shown in Figure 1, which provides the input to Acoustic Intelligence.

I would love to know more about this. I have a hard time understanding how this is better than the previous method utilizing the patients own voice

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