The Technology

Compared to conventional amplification strategies, Voice Aligned compression provides less compression at high input levels, and more at low input levels. This helps to provide more natural sound quality and maintain the integrity of the speech signal.

As the above illustration indicates, this is how it works:

Soft squelch
Soft squelch reduces the gain rapidly, to prevent low intensity background noises (e.g. hums and hisses in a quiet room) from being amplified.

Listening distance control
Low-level compression helps to increase the user's awareness of low-level environmental sounds, without affecting the gain applied to louder inputs.

Low level compression
More compression for low-level input helps to provide more linear gain for higher sound inputs where the important speech cues occur.

Increased linearity
Increasing the linear processing as input levels increase helps to preserve more of the dynamic characteristics of the speech signal in adverse listening situations.

Completion zone
For maximum protection from loud sounds, high input levels are given no amplification whatsoever.