In a clinical study, Absolute Audio Labs’ (AAL) Amadeus RiC Hearing Aids were found to be the preferred hearing aid for music streaming.
In a clinical study, Netherlands-based audio software pioneers Absolute Audio Labs (AAL) demonstrated that its Amadeus RiC Hearing Aids are the best-performing hearing aids for music streaming. The study compared 2 top models of receiver-in-canal (RiC) hearing aids on preference for music streaming against the AAL Amadeus.
The Amadeus is the successor to the CES Innovation Award-winning PYOUR Eccellenza AI premium+ and is also built on AAL’s PYOUR Audio Hearing 2.0 platform.
The setup was a double-blinded study to compare RiC hearing aids on music perception for hearing-impaired subjects. Two of the leading RiC Hearing Aids on the market for streaming of music, the Resound One and the Oticon More 1, were compared to the Amadeus reference design running PYOUR Audio Hearing 2.0.
Twelve subjects with binaural sensorineural hearing loss were included in this study. As many as 120 fragments of various genres of music were played to each subject while switching between devices. The subjects were blind to which device they were listening to and had to indicate their preferred device after each fragment.
Results showed that AAL’s RiC hearing aid prototype performed significantly better than the other two hearing aids. The biggest differences were observed in the genres of jazz and popular music. A critical difference between the AAL hearing aid and the competitor devices is that AAL includes music quality as a key feature in its design.
In addition to focussing on delivering high definition and full spectrum audio, AAL uses its revolutionary and patented compression technology: instantaneous wideband compression that keeps the patient’s dynamic range intact without distorting the audio, as typically happens with conventional WDRC-type compression.
The principal author of the study is Kars Tjepkema, BSc, as part of completing his Master Technical Medicine at the Technical University of Delft. The study was supervised by Jan de Laat, PhD, on behalf TU Delft/Technical Medicine and Kauê Werner M.Eng and Johannes Lyzenga, PhD, both part of the AAL R&D team.
Music enjoyment is in the DNA of Absolute Audio Labs. Since its start in 2016, AAL has released a series of products and innovations based on the PYOUR Audio platform. They all support restoring music enjoyment for the hearing impaired, such as the Award-winning and dedicated Parrot Zik Headphones adaptation.
“Music enjoyment has always been considered of minor importance by many large hearing industry players, but we believe that the introduction of the OTC hearing aid category and product launches by major audio brands like Sony and Jabra will trigger further awareness to the problem of the underwhelming performance of hearing aids for music in general,” said Aernout Arends, chief executive officer and founder of Absolute Audio Labs.
AAL intends to conduct more clinical studies on music and speech-related comparisons as part of the development of the third generation of the PYOUR Audio Hearing platform in close collaboration with leading institutions and innovation partners and as part of an R&D project co-funded by the European Union and the “Kansen voor West” regional program.
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