Classifying Automatic Signal Processors
Mead Killion, Wayne Staab, and Dave Preves
Hearing Instruments, vol 41(8), 1990
SOMETHING ABOUT MEAD
Mead was the master of acronyms, including his occasional use of the pen name Dr. ABONSO, standing for Automatic Brain Operated Noise Suppressed Output. In fact, his AOL email address contains ABONSO. These three authors have been long-time friends. Mead was championing TILL with his K-AMP, Dave supporting BILL processing with Argosy’s Manhattan circuit. And Wayne just wanted to help educate everyone about all of this. Underlying the various processing strategies was the use of Frequency Dependent Input Compression (FDIC). Fortunately, that’s the one acronym didn’t make is past the editing room floor!
SUMMARY
Not unlike today’s DSP-based HAs, the height of the analog era featured a number of different approaches to overcome the challenges of hearing loss. In this article, the authors argue that a signal-processing tree would help bring order to the various marketing efforts involved in each scheme. At the time this was useful, but of course with a modern DSP HA one can configure pretty much mimic any of these behaviors.
Annotated by: Steve Armstrong