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Lucid Hearing, LLC has announced its latest over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid, Tala™, which now represents the company's premium option in its line of devices for people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. Based in Fort Worth, Tex, Lucid Hearing is a provider of hearing technology and audio solutions that distributes products both online and in over 500 Lucid Hearing Centers throughout the United States, primarily found in Sam's Club stores. Tala looks more like consumer electronic earbuds than traditional hearing aids. It will initially be sold on its website, with multiple retailers distributing the new device in the coming months, including Best Buy. Tala’s price will be $1,299.
“Tala is innovative, discreet and powerful, and uses our most advanced technology released to date,” said Lucid Hearing VP of Innovation Steve Iseberg in a press statement. “This product’s discreet design will make it popular among individuals who have mild to moderate hearing loss, and who want a solution that doesn’t look like a hearing aid. It simply looks like you’re wearing earbuds to listen to streaming music or entertainment from your phone or TV.”
Tala uses Lucid's new proprietary Precision Directional Listening System (PDL), which the company says will also be employed in subsequent devices to address the full spectrum of hearing loss—whether mild to moderate or more severe. PDL is designed to enhance the users' ability to hear speech and other desired sounds while minimizing background noise. According to the company, by combining sophisticated signal processing algorithms with directional microphone technology, PDL refines sounds in front of the user while suppressing unwanted noise from other directions, greatly enhancing speech intelligibility and overall listening comfort.
“We’ve positioned Tala’s microphones in such a way to optimize the hearing function so that we get the best directional performance through PDL,” says Lucid EVP of R&D Bennett Griffin. “These benefits are especially important in situations where individuals with mild to moderate hearing loss are struggling the most, like in noisy restaurants or in meetings, and they're trying to make sure they really understand what people are saying.”
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Tala also employs LucidShape, a unique app-based function that allows for the personalization of the instrument's output with frequency/pitch-specific adjustments, enabling the tuning of the device to better suit the user's preferences.
Featuring Bluetooth-compatible wireless streaming, Tala joins the two other Bluetooth Lucid OTC models: the Engage and Engage Rechargeable receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aids, which are offered at $600 and $800, respectively. Other Lucid OTC devices include the fio and Elite in-the-ear (ITE) and Enrich and Enrich Pro behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids. The company also makes a line of standard prescription hearing aids for its retail outlets.
As with Lucid Hearing’s premium OTC products, Tala can be upgraded to a custom-programmed prescription hearing aid solution at any of the company’s 500+ locations, which are predominantly Lucid Hearing Centers within Sam's Club stores.
“Lucid Hearing operates on a vertically integrated model, from R&D all the way through to our customer-facing hearing clinics,” says Griffin, “and we’ve intentionally built a technology stack that allows us to seamlessly upgrade a premium OTC hearing aid to a prescription-level solution if at some point the customer wants to take that next step. This is something that is unique to Lucid Hearing and our continuum of OTC and prescription hearing aid products.”
According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), approximately 40 million American adults may have hearing loss from various types of noise exposure. In August 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) opened the market for OTC hearing devices for individuals with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss.
Lucid reports that it has made significant investments in the past 5 years to develop hearing aids with pre-set programming for its OTC devices, with programs developed as a result of research done in conjunction with a top audiology research program at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).
For more information, please visit the Lucid Hearing website.
