Oticon Agil Offers Better Speech Understanding with Reduced Cognitive Effort and New MiniRITE

This article was submitted to HR by Gordon Wilson, MBA, vice president of marketing at Oticon Inc, Somerset, NJ. Correspondence can be addressed to HR or .

Oticon Agil is the new premium family of high performing hearing solutions from Oticon (Figure 1). With revolutionary signal processing and second-generation wireless features, Agil delivers better speech understanding with reduced cognitive effort.

Because we hear with our brain, Agil’s priority in all amplification and signal processing is to keep sound as natural and uncorrupted as possible. By intelligently preserving signal fidelity, Oticon Agil helps to give the brain access to every bit of information needed to organize the world of sound, select the desired sound source, and follow it.

New Platform; Advanced Capabilities

Using the new Rise 2 platform, Agil introduces three breakthrough signal processing technologies:

Spatial Sound 2.0 builds on Oticon’s breakthrough spatial sound system by adding a binaural noise management system to the binaural compression system.

FIGURE 1. Oticon Agil comes in a full range of hearing instrument styles, from CIC and micro-power CIC to RITE and BTE.

The Binaural Compression System in Agil helps preserve loudness differences between ears. These tiny differences are extremely important for the brain to navigate in a room full of sound. A new Binaural Noise Management System in Agil is designed to mimic the brain’s natural ability to focus on where to listen. It prioritizes the ear with the better signal when there is loud noise to one side; the system then applies more noise reduction to the instrument on the noisy side, freeing the wearer to focus better on speech.

FIGURE 2. In launching the Agil line, Oticon has also introduced the new Agil miniRITE.

Speech Guard automatically adjusts gain level in changing environments without the speech distortions of traditional compression systems.

Speech Guard consists of two parallel analysis functions. One analysis function monitors the long-term overall level of the input and adjusts the gain of the hearing instrument accordingly. The second analysis function monitors sudden large changes in the signal. If such a change is detected beyond the moment-to-moment fluctuations that are expected in the speech signal, an instantaneous momentary adjustment in gain keeps the sudden sound from becoming uncomfortable or distracting.

Connect [+] greatly improves the sound quality of streamed signals in two ways: Power Bass restores the bass sound typically lost through open fittings, whereas Music Widening applies advanced reverberation research to reproduce a sense of space and realism.

Full Line Includes New Mini-RITE

The Agil family also introduces a new miniRITE design, which is 30% smaller than our standard RITE (Figure 2). Organic in shape, it’s ideal for the first-time or experienced user.

The complete Agil portfolio includes a full custom lineup with power CIC, RITE, and BTE models.

Should you have any questions regarding Agil, we invite you to call us at (800) 526-3921 and speak with your Oticon representative. You can also visit us online at www.oticonusa.com to learn more about Agil.