Speech Guard
Helping users hear speech clearly.
A breakthrough feature exclusive to Oticon Agil is Speech Guard – designed to dramatically improve the listener’s ability to follow speech, even in complex listening environments.
By preserving speech and spatial cues, and by greatly enhancing transparency, Speech Guard takes sound quality to greater heights. Naturally, the more the amplified signal resembles the original speech signal, the better the listener’s speech perception will be.
Speech is dynamic and loudness levels change over time. Loudness changes represent an important natural cue that enables us to distinguish one person speaking from another. Generally, loudness changes occur within a predictable range and in a predictable pattern.
However, in complex listening environments, other sounds enter the picture. These sounds affect the behaviour of the signal, making it increase and decrease in unpredictable patterns. To protect the listener from dramatic changes in signal levels, traditional compression strategies were designed to increase loudness of soft sounds and reduce loudness of loud sounds – often at the expense of sound quality. In fact, many subtle details of the original speech signal are lost by traditional compression.
Oticon Agil’s new RISE 2 platform represents a significant advance in processing power and intelligence. RISE 2 is twice as fast as the original RISE platform and incorporates more efficient signal processing methods.
The new generation platform allows realisation of the three new audiological concepts in Oticon Agil: Speech Guard, Spatial Sound 2.0 and Connect[+]. These concepts are designed to preserve the natural characteristics of the soundscene in order to enable the brain to use less energy for listening. As a result, users have more energy left to participate fully in social interaction.
Oticon Agil
Better understanding - less effort