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Originally published on 06/10/2002
"The Woodstock generation did a really good job of blowing their ears out," Symphonix founder and CTO Geoffrey Ball told me, by way of introducing me to the potential customers of his high-tech hearing-aid technology.
Fast Facts:
Symphonix
www.symphonix.com |
| CEO |
Kirk Davis. Previously at Abbott Labs.
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| HQ |
San Jose, CA
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| Employees |
50
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| Market |
Hearing aids
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| Funding |
Public (Nasdaq: SMPX)
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| Profitable? |
"Soon"
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In an outpatient surgical procedure, Symphonix's Soundbridge, a tiny gold and titanium transducer, is implanted so that it can directly vibrate the ossicles of the ear, which yields fidelity greater than is possible with traditional speaker-based hearing aids. The transducer is wired to a receiver circuit that's implanted just under the skin, behind the ear.
Held onto the outside of the skull by a magnet in the receiver, there's a removable, concealable, battery-powered unit with a microphone and a digital signal processor that controls the implanted receiver by inductance through the skin.
In addition to numerous technical advantages over the usual amplifier-based hearing aids (such as no blockage of the ear canal and much greater longevity of the hardware), the device also has non-technical benefits: it is FDA-approved and covered by insurance (since surgery is involved) -- which is good, because the device and the procedure are expensive.
Conceptually related to this is a new product, invented by Wave Technologies and sold by Olympia, called the Soundbug. This audio device, about the size of a small electric shaver, has a 2-inch diameter suction cup that you use to stick the product onto a window, table, or other surface. It then turns the whole surface into a soundboard by using an odd crystalline material called Terfenol-D that vibrates minutely but at great force in response to a signal fed into it. Quality is good enough for speakerphones and presentation equipment.
I've always thought that sound reproduction was all about moving air; these two products correct my assumption.
- Rafe Needleman
email: rafe-needleman@catchoday.com
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