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Just as everyone's fingerprints are unique, so is everyone's hearing profile. What sounds great to one person, might sound terrible to another.
SnowOwl delivers audio matching your unique hearing profile. It can also be used as a listening companion, even in the most noisy places. SnowOwl is great for people that occasionally have issues understanding speech-in-noise. For example on public transportation, busy streets, in restaurants and bars. And because of its directional microphones it is perfect for listening to someone giving a speech or a lecture.
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SnowOwl can be worn on your wrist, placed on a table and clipped on your clothes. SnowOwl and the wristband both have a magnet, which allows you to rotate the device 360 degrees.
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SnowOwl can turn any wired earphones into wireless earphones and improve the quality of direct audio input (TV, music, movies) with personalized audio.
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SnowOwl helps you protect your hearing from damaging over-exposure to loud noise, while keeping speech clear and comfortable. It provides environmental sound control via directional audio, eliminating so called 'cocktail party noise', reducing background noise, and personalizing and equalizing the audio environment.
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There are more than 20 functions contained within SnowOwl, and at present those functions are each sold mostly as separate pieces of hardware. SnowOwl is both an incredible value and an important innovation, perfect for anyone who wants to hear more or hear better. Our team of audio researchers, hearing aid professionals, earphone professionals, and PSAP professionals is confident that we have a world-class product on our hands.
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The SnowOwl is unique in its class because of its capability to deal with speech in noise, the large (and continuously growing) number of full app controlled features, its ability to be programmed, upgraded and updated and the large variety of connectivity options.
Built on our unique Audio platform, the SnowOwl can be updated, upgraded, full settings control, and collaborate with other products, like earbuds or hearing aids. The SnowOwl mobile app (Android/IOS) also offers a large variety of services for testing, programming and connecting to a qualified health professional for remote services.
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SnowOwl has 8 acoustic preference settings for the left ear and right ear, separately. You can choose the optimal setting via the app and program it into the SnowOwl.
There are multiple ways to self-select settings. One way is via a self-administered hearing screening in the App. Another way is via a connected qualified health provider who can do a full clinical hearing test. The App also allows you to manually enter any audiogram that you might have.
For users that suspect they may have a hearing loss, acquiring a proper diagnosis from a qualified health expert is the best path to take. Products like the SnowOwl, and other products integrated with the Audio platform, are intended to bring the new generation of affordable hearables and wearables into qualified health offices. This allows providers to assist you with their expertise in health and optimal hearing. In time, your hearing condition might change, and being in the good care of a qualified health provider means that you can receive optimal assistance whatever your hearing situation requires.
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SnowOwl is compatible with the revolutionary Line-1 noise-suppression system. This is a true and patented innovation that originates from a team of top audiological researchers at the famous VU University of Amsterdam and our partner Speechlab, a VU university spin-off.
Line-1 has proven scientifically to offer most people (regardless if they were tested for a hearing loss or not) a drastic improvement in their ability to understand speech in noisy situations. Some users have described it like “putting a blanket over the noise while preserving the speech”. It even works at distances of over 10 feet, sometimes even up to 30 feet away (in noise).
Snow Owl can be used with wired earbuds, earphones or headphones or with Bluetooth wireless sets. It uses Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy with the special aptX low-latency add-on.
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The many different audio functions are all accessible via the app:
- Volume and Balance control
- Directionality & Noise Suppression control
- Equalizer control
- Bluetooth connectivity control
- Remote microphone control
- Audio streaming control
- Noise suppression setup
- Personal profile setup
- Audio compression setup
- Output limiting setup
- Bluetooth connectivity setup
- Remote microphone setup
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Our Audio platform is freely available for consumers by way of downloading the App in the IOS or Android app stores. Via this app, you can easily connect your SnowOwl device. After it installs the appropriate and latest version of firmware, you can choose settings and update or upgrade your SnowOwl (via over the air firmware upgrade capability), control device functions, and setup audio streaming.
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We have designed our platform so that it gives consumers all the tools they need to easily create, store, and apply audio. This allows them to optimize their speech reception performance under challenging conditions and more generally to deal with high noise levels, regardless of their hearing ability (limited to mild-moderate hearing losses).
Giving consumers tools for self education, tools to assess and manage loudness exposure, and tools to assess audio profile/hearing capability are an important part of what we call our “system-approach”. It allows consumers to make better informed decisions on their hearing care and offers them total freedom of choice. In this vision, we also feel that consumers should have the option to ask assistance/counselling of a caretaker or health care professional. Therefore, the platform also has capability to remotely fine tune devices (only with permission).
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Our main goal of noise reduction is optimizing the understandability of speech. When there is more noise in the environment, everybody automatically talks louder. However, normally-hearing people only increase their volume to a level where normally-hearing listeners can just understand them.
For hearing-impaired listeners that means that the speech levels are always a handful of dB too soft for them and they miss out in the conversation. Our aim is to give them back those 4 to 6 dB, so they can partake normally in the conversation again. Therefore, we reduce the noise by 5 to 6 dB, instead of reducing it as much as possible.
In addition, it is crucial to apply a noise reduction scheme that does not damage the speech. The noise reduction scheme applied here is the result of research executed at the VUmc Medical Center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
It is not just based on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), but on the SNR of signal fluctuations, as speech is an ever changing signal and it are those changes that carry much of the information. This results in the SNR in the modulation domain. So, we want to boost the fluctuations in the speech-noise mixture as appropriately as possible.
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The applied LINE-1 noise suppression scheme is covered by multiple US patents. This noise suppression scheme is a single channel noise suppression scheme that we have applied for the left and right audio channels independently. This enable the brain to keep using the spatial information. It was developed at the VUmc Medical Center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and is based on the comparison of the actual frequency spectrum of an audio frame to the estimated frequency spectrum of the noise. It has proved to enhance speech perception in hearing tests in both normally-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.
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SnowOwl is intended for listening to your environment through a combination of ear buds and the wearable. The ear buds dampen the surrounding sounds, while the hearable presents an improved version of those sounds through those ear buds. By applying a microphone array and the aforementioned noise-reduction scheme, this results in a lower noise volume and clearer speech.
To accommodate for mild and moderately impaired listeners, one of eight different hearing profiles can be chosen to optimize their perception. Suggestions for the choice can be based on estimates of pure-tone sensitivity, on the results of selective speech-in-noise tests, or simply on the experiences of the listener. Profiles can be replaced very easily, so also a trial-and-error method can be used. For normally-hearing users, a flat profile will be used. It is the combination of noise reduction and hearing profiles that optimizes the listening experience when using our hearable to make conversing under noisy conditions easier.
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Right now, we are looking to you for help raising $25,000. This start-up capital will cover the costs of manufacturing, marketing, and distributing SnowOwl on a wide scale. As a thank-you, we plan on sending out SnowOwl at a discounted rate to anyone who contributes at least that dollar value to this campaign.
If you are a hearing provider interested in carrying this unique next generation wearable into your practice, you can order one of the provider packages. One of the many things that let the SnowOwl stand out is that you can service those products via in-store or remote services.
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SnowOwl is not a Hearing Aid. It is intended for everybody that has a need for improved speech in noise capabilities. For people who are struggling with mild or moderate hearing problems, a whole new generation of hearable and wearable are getting on the market that have some speech-in-noise improvement capability. Our Audio platform and the SnowOwl are bringing this to a totally new level.. SnowOwl is a device that assist in many challenging situations, for a wide variety of audio profiles. Everybody can think of situations where they are in need of this handy high quality tool that makes parties, festivals, restaurants and other high-noise environments easier to navigate.
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The biggest risk with our project is in finding the right manufacturing partners. Our Audio platform 2.0 has not yet been released, however the core audio features are all fully developed and tested. Because of the sensitivity of SnowOwl, we need to work only with people who are reliable and who understand the importance of what we are doing. We intend to choose our partners very carefully.
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Beyond making a monetary contribution, you can help us by sharing our campaign with all your friends and family. Go ahead and post the campaign URL on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other social media platforms you use. The more people are aware of what we are doing beforehand, the smoother the SnowOwl launch will go.
We appreciate all contributions, monetary and non-monetary, and we extend to you, our supporters, our deepest gratitude.