9/3/2017

 6:23:48 PM

Oticon's "BrainHearing" technology utilizes an Open Sound technique (hence the name OPN) for picking up sound and delivering it to the brain.  All other hearing aid manufacturers use traditional "beam forming" technology to pick up sound and deliver it to the brain.  

Beam forming technology attempts to identify the most obvious or prevalent "speech signal", separate that signal from environmental noise, transfer it to the front of a person's head (like a beam) and then deliver it to the ears and then to the brain.  Typically this results in a slower, more distorted, and less natural way for the brain to identify sound, process sound, and process sound speech.  It takes significantly longer, for example, for the noise in the room to be attenuated, transferred to the front of the head, and transferred again to the ears. 

BrainHearing technology (the newest OPN hearing devices) picks up sound coming from all directions instantaneously, processes that sound, separates the speech from the noise, and delivers it to the ears and brain immediately (without having to identify speech and transfer it to the front of a person's head like a beam).  This allows people to pick up speech naturally from all directions.  There is no delay and sounds and speech in the environment are processed right away by the brain.  This also preserves the timing cues of sound (unlike beam forming) so that people can localize sound better.  Sound is not transferred to the front of the head - instead it is preserved naturally in the environment where it started from.

As A Result:

Studies have shown that Oticon's Opn provides 30% better speech understanding, reduces listening effort by 20%, and results in a 20% increase in remembering conversations.  Exceptionally fast sound processing means people don't have to work as hard to hear - they feel less stress and are more likely to join in conversations.  The hearing devices separate speech from noise so people can shift focus from one speaker to another, even in challenging listening environments.

There's more:

Opn is rechargeable for convenient overnight charging.  It also provides built-in Tinnitus SoundSupport.  People can benefit from a range of customizable relief sounds.  Opn connects wirelessly as well to IPhones so people can stream audio or music right to their hearing aids.  In addition, a TV adaptor turns the hearing aids into wireless headphones enabling people to pick up their TVs right in their hearing devices.