“To the hearing impaired listener, the fidelity of a hearing aid is not fidelity to the input sound but fidelity to the normal perception of that sound.”
This quote from a 2004 article on hearing aids by Edgar Villchur sums up what has been and continues to be the ReSound philosophy of amplification. Villchur passed away in October of this year at the age of 94, and the article appears as a tribute to him on AudiologyOnline.com. For those not familiar with the history, Villchur’s ground-breaking research on hearing loss by multichannel wide dynamic range compression was first commercialized in ReSound hearing aids, and over the last two decades has become the industry standard for hearing aid design.
In addition to his revolutionary contributions to hearing aids, Villchur’s innovations included the acoustic suspension woofers and dome tweeters that are used in virtually every loud speaker today. Just as the inventions of Les Paul profoundly affected electric guitars and the music industry, the contributions of Edgar Villchur completely changed both how normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners enjoy amplified sound.
Read the tribute to Edgar Villchur on AudiologyOnline.com.