SoundRecover (c)

SoundRecover is a new innovation by Phonak that is worthy of separate mention here.

It has revolutionised access to speech sounds for children and adults with high frequency hearing loss.

If a patient has no access to sound in the high frequency region it is not possible, with a conventional hearing aid, to provide effective amplification at this point.  This has always been a problem with deaf and hearing impaired people, and gives rise to what many think of as classic deaf speech of those pre-lingually deaf.  Many consonant sounds - including the sibilants /s/ /sh/ , the fricatives /f/ /th/ and the velar plosives /k/ /g/ fall in this frequency range.  These sounds can be misheard and then become absent in speech or substituted with other sounds.

SoundRecover is able to 'compress' the inaudible high-frequency sounds into a lower more audible region, providing access that would be inaccessible with conventional amplification.

Deafness through the aging process, presbcusis, results in a high fequency hearing loss, so too do many congenital hearing losses eg those caused by anoxia, ototoxic drugs, hyperbilirubinaemia.

SoundRecover (c) is now available on all of the new range of Phonak hearing aids.