Phonak AI Technology

A pioneer in AI-based machine learning for over 24 years 

As far back as the year 2000, Phonak recognized the transformative potential of AI. Over the course of these past 24 years, we've continued to innovate and advanced  the integration of AI into our sound classification and noise reduction strategies. 

What actually is the DEEPSONIC chip technology?

DEEPSONIC is a Deep Neural Network which is developed and proprietary to Phonak. Its task is to separate speech from noise and is the first DNN for signal processing in hearing aid technology.

Neural networks are a specific kind of machine learning models that are known to be good at modelling perception-like tasks. Like most other machine learning approaches, they are trained with large numbers of examples of inputs and expected outputs. Their model structure is inspired by neurons in biological brains. Deep neural networks (DNNs) are particularly complex neural networks that have the ability to model very complex relationships of inputs and outputs and still generalize correctly from them.

So how is Spheric Speech Clarity, enabled by DEEPSONIC, working?

Spheric Speech Clarity receives as input a full spectrum of 64 frequencies, each of which has a real and imaginary component (you may also imagine it as frequency and phase). This spectrum contains the full audio signal information so the further processing can work with maximum precision. 

Utilizing the deep neural network with 4.5 million parameters, the DNN computes a 64-frequency mask that separates speech from noise which is then applied to the audio signal.

The result is a clean speech signal. 

The benefits of Spheric Speech Clarity

Phonak Audeo Sphere Infinio with Spheric Speech clarity delivers a level of clean and clear speech, in any direction, far beyond any existing technology.

By separating speech from noise, Spheric Speech Clarity achieves an impressive SNR benefit of up to 10 dB in complex group conversations. It is predicted to provide up to 150% more access to speech cues. And clearer speech allows clients to focus on what’s relevant.