Product Focus -  Phonak Eon

Hearing technology has never been better but each of the manufacturers excel in different areas. As an independent (not tied to any brands), one of Joy’s tasks is to match the most appropriate hearing aids to the patient’s lifestyle and hearing loss type. In this product focus we are taking an in depth look into the Phonak Eon, which excels in wind noise reduction. If you are an outdoor enthusiast, a golfer or a walker it could be the right product for you.

Wind noise occupies a strange category: it isn't really a sound, and it isn't really noise in any traditional sense. Detecting and resolving wind noise can be particularly challenging because wind is unpredictable: it fluctuates with gusts, changes direction, and varies with user activity. This makes it a more complex target than steady-state noise sources such as traffic or crowd noise. The spectral overlap between wind noise and speech compounds the problem further. Wind noise is broadband, meaning its energy spreads across a wide range of frequencies, but it is most intense at the low end of the spectrum, precisely where vowels and other important speech cues are concentrated. Aggressive attenuation in these regions risks removing or distorting speech content.
It's not only hearing aid microphones that are susceptible to wind noise. Outdoor news reporters, sports commentators, and content creators all face the same problem, which is why microphones used in the field are routinely fitted with a windscreen. These fluffy shields deflect and disrupt airflow while allowing sound to pass through. Hearing aids, for obvious reasons, cannot accommodate a fluffy cover; instead, wind noise must be managed internally. This occurs in two sequential stages: detection and suppression.

Phonak’s WindBlock 2.0 delivers improved target sound fidelity while continuing to effectively attenuate low-frequency wind noise. The new wind noise cancellation algorithm is guided by two key observations: wind noise is uncorrelated across the front and rear microphones. At its core, WindBlock 2.0 emphasizes the rear microphone signal where wind is typically less prevalent. The approach starts with the rear microphone signal and applies a dynamic gain derived from the cross-correlation between the front and rear microphones. The portion of the signal correlated with the front microphone (e.g., speech) is preserved, while the uncorrelated wind noise is suppressed, resulting in a signal where the intended speech remains largely unchanged and the wind noise is attenuated.
Find out more at https://www.phonak.com/en-us/hearing-devices/hearing-aids/audeo-eon-sphere