Only Super Power on the market designed to address over-amplification while maximizing speech intelligibility.
October 12, 2012 - Kitchener, Canada – Unitron announced today Max™, a new Super Power hearing instrument with technologies purposely designed to meet the needs of those with severe to profound hearing loss. Max is the only Super Power hearing instrument on the market with Power Adaptation Manager, an industry-first feature that addresses over-amplification, while maximizing speech intelligibility. Max is the next product to be powered by Era™, Unitron’s latest generation sound processing platform.
Protects long term hearing health through automatic gain reduction
In a recent survey of 200 hearing healthcare providers conducted by Unitron’s product development team, 87 percent of those surveyed indicated that over-amplification is a persisting issue in their practice and would welcome a means to address the potential harm this can cause to residual hearing while still meeting patient needs.
Max is a hearing instrument designed to provide maximum power and maximum protection for the wearer. It is the first and only hearing instrument on the market today to include Power Adaptation Manager, an innovative, industry-first feature from Unitron that provides the first fit that wearers expect, while gently and automatically transitioning them to safer gain levels as prescribed by industry standard fitting formulas. Power Adaptation Manager allows hearing healthcare providers to put an end to the over-amplification cycle that is common among individuals with severe to profound hearing loss, while enabling better protection of a client’s long term hearing health.
“While hearing healthcare providers recognize the need to reduce gain to maximize speech intelligibility and protect the long term hearing health of their clients with severe to profound loss, they typically face client rejection when they attempt to manually reduce gain,” says Donald Hayes, Ph.D., Director of Audiology, Unitron. “Power Adaptation Manager solves this challenge, by automatically and imperceptibly reducing gain and output to safer levels, gradually and deliberately. A hearing healthcare professional determines the right starting point for a client, then using Unitron’s TrueFit™ software, establishes a timeline to reduce gain and MPO that works best for the client.”
Max puts the focus on speech intelligibility
In Max, three optimized technologies work in harmony to maximize speech intelligibility without compromising awareness. Drawing from decades of research, and in keeping with Unitron’s philosophy of using industry standard fitting formulas, Max first leverages NAL and DSL industry standard formulas to prescribe gain targets to maximize speech intelligibility for people with severe to profound hearing loss.
Max also has customized Unitron signature feature SmartFocus™ for the Super Power category. Directional microphone, speech enhancement, noise reduction and gain work together and in relation to each other to provide a Max wearer with best speech understanding and comfort without compromising awareness.
Finally, Max incorporates frequency compression – an industry leading feature for severe to profound hearing loss – which shifts sounds away from areas where hearing is most damaged , compressing them into an audible range in order for clients to experience the full spectrum of sounds.
“We have enjoyed exceptional marketplace response to the Era platform and our Quantum™, Moxi™ product families since their release last year,” says Jan Metzdorff, President, Unitron. “The hearing healthcare community has embraced our achievements in delivering natural sound quality with superior speech intelligibility. With Max we extend these advancements to the Super Power category – becoming the first manufacturer in the industry to address the persistent issue of over-amplification while protecting long term hearing health and delivering speech intelligibility for clients with severe to profound hearing loss.”
About Unitron
Unitron is a global company that understands the hearing healthcare business is built on strong, personal relationships. We work closely with hearing healthcare professionals to improve the lives of people with hearing loss. A member of the Sonova Group, Unitron has a proven track record of developing hearing innovations that provide natural sound with exceptional speech understanding. Headquartered in Canada, Unitron distributes its full line of hearing instruments to customers in over 60 countries. For more information, please visit us on the web at unitron.com or the Unitron Expo Page on AudiologyOnline.
