Starkey Digital Hearing Aids

Starkey Insider Information

Starkey is the only American hearing aid manufacturer as three out of the big six manufacturers come from Denmark. They're the only privately owned manufacturer and the owner is billionaire Bill Austin from Texas. Over the last few years, they have developed some amazing and innovative hearing aid technology. They're the Donald Trump of the hearing aid world in many respects.  

If you're struggling to understand the make and model names of Starkey hearing aids then here's a simple guide to help:

Technology Levels - 1000, 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400

The higher the number, the higher the technology level and the higher the price.

Soundlens is the name they give to their tiny, invisible hearing aids. 

Who is Starkey?

Starkey is a worldwide hearing technology firm headquartered in Minnesota, USA. The story of Starkey began when Harold Starkey opened his first workshop in 1963. Starkey Laboratories was then purchased by William F. Austin in 1967 and Starkey Hearing Technologies was established.

The American legacy stayed a critical component of its identity, even as it grew to become a worldwide company, hiring more than 500 people and serving in 100 markets around the world. The company has a history of supplying hearing technology to some of the most high-profile Americans around, including U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

Another cornerstone of Starkey's identity has been a dedication to philanthropy, supporting individuals around the world who are living with hearing loss. From its very inception in 1984, the Starkey Hearing Foundation has provided more than 1 million hearing aids to people in need around the globe.

Since the day the company started, Starkey has been pioneering innovative hearing aid technologies, including the world’s first:

• In-the-ear hearing aid in 1971
• Completely-in-canal hearing aid in 1992
• Invisible-in-canal hearing aid in 2010
• ‘Healthable’ hearing aid in 2019

Notable Features

Starkey boasts a variety of sophisticated sound processing techniques, created and tested at the company's own research centre in Berkeley, California, and other U.S. and other facilities worldwide.

Here are a few of their latest features:

Hearing Reality

Livio AI hearing aids are the first to provide a brand-new technology called Hearing Reality. Best understood as the ear's answer to virtual reality, Hearing Reality utilizes high-speed, high-definition software processing to handle, separate and support us in concentrating these multiple layers of sound to better reproduce natural hearing.

Acuity Immersion

Introduced at the International Congress of Hearing Aid Acousticians (EUHA) in 2017, this technology is intended to preserve the natural advantages of the ear to enhance sound and spatial awareness. It helps boost awareness of the direction of sound for a more natural, safer hearing experience. Spatial awareness is important because it helps connect us with the objects around us, keeping us safe from accidental falls and helping us orient ourselves successfully.

Multiflex Technology

Those who find it hard to contain the ringing in their ears will benefit from this feature. It helps to reduce the effects of symptoms associated with Tinnitus, helping you focus more on the conversations in front of you.

Thrive Hearing app

Used with the Livio AI, the convenient-to-use Thrive app is thoughtfully designed with features that give patients more control over their hearing aids. It allows users to view and maintain their health data and provides a wide range of services.

TruLink app

The app lets you customize how the hearing aids sound, fine-tune noise cancellation features and geographically save your settings so that the hearing aids can immediately switch to your favourite settings when you return to a matching location.

Notable Models

Livio Edge AI

Starkey's latest 'healthable' hearing aid launch, in 2020, was the Livio Edge AI - the world's first rechargeable custom hearing aid.  Including Starkey's famous artificial intelligence technology and great sound experience.  

You will experience:

1. Comfortable speech recognition in challenging situations as well as suppressing unwanted noise.
2. Sound that is both natural and effortless as you transition into different surroundings.
3. Seamless streaming with calls, devices and music the way it is supposed to be heard.
4. Connect via Bluetooth with all your favourite accessories, devices and smartphones.

Livio AI

Livio AI is the world's first ‘Healthable’ hearing aid to be used to monitor physical and cognitive health with the help of integrated sensors and Artificial Intelligence. It is truly a multi-functional hearing aid. New Hearing Reality technology reduces the impact of noisy environments on speech comprehension by 50 per cent and significantly reduces the effort required to hear.

With the remote Microphone+, Livio is also the first hearing device with Amazon Alexa connectivity.  Also includes:

• Translate languages in real-time.
• 2.4GHz radio to help you stream content straight to your hearing aids from a mobile phone.
• Able to detect falls in the user, and send a call for help to a nominated person.

Halo iQ

Halo iQ is a hearing instrument for iPhone that enables Apple mobile devices to be streamed directly to the hearing aid. Available as a RIC-style hearing aid, these hearing aids stream audio and phone calls, not unlike a wireless headphone. You will need an Android device to stream audio from the phone with SurfLink, but you can manage the hearing aid setup directly with Apple or Android devices from Starkey's TruLink app.

Halo iQ hearing aids provide better directional hearing quality compared to the earlier Halo hearing aids. The latest Halo iQ operating system Acuity OS 2 is developed to restore a more realistic feeling of space while at the same time lowering background noise even better than previous models. This is possible because of the use of a wireless connection between the right and left hearing aids, which enables them to function together rather than separately.

Regular speech processing sometimes doesn’t provide the loud and soft dynamics and the complete frequency range required to portray the full complexities of music. The new operating system within the Halo iQ adds a new feature which allows the hearing aids to process speech and music independently.

Halo 2

These are one of Starkey’s first made for iPhone hearing aids. They provide the following features:

• Stream content directly to your hearing aids
• Excellent sound quality and clarity
• Industry-leading feedback elimination technology
• Designed to help you understand speech much better in challenging conditions

Muse

One of their most popular hearing aids ever, the Muse is a Starkey classic. It was definitely a major hit among those with hearing loss, primarily due to its mixture of convenience, aesthetic quality and technological abilities.

The Muse line of hearing aids has been designed to produce natural audio in almost any environment. If you give priority to discussions or speech, in particular, the Muse family's Acuity Directional systems will improve your experience, catchwords and voices from any direction and filter out external noise.

The model also includes Acuity Binaural Imaging which helps even further with speech understanding. Using complex components and processing software, Muse hearing aids offer a binaural listening experience that is much closer to true hearing than earlier iterations of instruments.

Soundlens

This might be a small hearing aid, but the SoundLens offers excellent sound for its size. The digital hearing aid is fully programmable and has several technical capabilities. For example, Starkey's Voice iQ is a feature which successfully eliminates noise. In addition, the PureWave technology reduces audio feedback and sounds you don't need. Finally, the T2 remote control enables you to manage the hearing device without having to worry about fiddling with the device itself.