Signia MaX Hearing Aids Introduced So You Can “Live Noisy”

Signia Launches the Pure C&G AI MaX Hearing Aid: With FOUR AI Brains?!

In this YouTube video, HearingTracker Audiologist Matthew Allsop provides an overview of Signia MaX.

Signia has launched Signia MaX, which the company describes as the world’s first multi-dimensional AI hearing aid platform with four task-specific Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) working together through what it calls Acoustic Intelligence (AI). MaX stands for “Multi-adaptive Xperience” and can be viewed as the next evolution from Signia’s previous Integrated Xperience (IX) platform, as it overlays speech detection on top of the IX’s multi-beamforming and voice tracking functions.

The goal is to enable hearing aid wearers to engage naturally in conversations, hear the people they’re conversing with as well as the environment around them—while maintaining comfort even in a lot of noise.

And here’s the best thing: it works! Members of the media were given a sneak peek at the technology at Signia’s June 15-17 media event in Munich, and I was able to wear MaX for an entire day across multiple environments, from a quiet speech setting to an extremely loud street (once even with a jackhammer!), as well as a more hearing-friendly, but still loud, restaurant with multiple talkers at a table.

What is MaX?

Most hearing aid companies now talk about artificial intelligence, usually in connection with reducing background noise. Signia’s new MaX platform is built around a different proposition: AI should not merely power one noise-reduction feature; it should help steer the entire hearing aid experience.

Signia MaX Pure Charge&Go (C&G) hearing aid display at Munich launch event.

That idea is packaged under the name Acoustic Intelligence, a system of four DNNs that run continuously and work together to analyze speech, noise, the wearer’s own voice, and the broader acoustic environment. Rather than promising to eliminate the sounds of everyday life, the company is introducing an intentionally provocative marketing campaign around the theme “Live Noisy.”

“Everybody wants to cancel noise. We say live noisy,” said Matthias Konradsen, Signia’s strategic programs lead. “Where there’s noise, there’s life.”

While "Live Noisy" is a clever slogan, it does capture the central technical argument behind MaX: background sound is not always an enemy. The crowd at a sporting event, music in a restaurant, traffic on a street, or laughter around a table may compete with speech, but it’s also essential to feeling present and connected. The challenge is knowing what to preserve, what to soften, and what to enhance as the listener’s needs change from moment to moment.

We know that the biggest unmet need for hearing aid wearers is the ability to fully engage in the dynamic group conversations that happen in noisy, multi-talker environments. With Signia MaX, we’ve moved beyond the limitations of one-dimensional AI, unlocking system intelligence that understands the full moment. Acoustic Intelligence represents a new frontier in AI sound processing, fundamentally reimagining what hearing care professionals can offer their patients— and what patients can expect from their hearing aids.

Jose Alves, Head of Signia in a press statement

Signia Head Jose Alves introduces Signia MaX to an audience of media members, hearing care professionals, and staff.

From IX to MaX: AI Becomes the System

Signia IX introduced RealTime Conversation Enhancement (RTCE), which tracks and enhances multiple conversation partners as they move and speak around the wearer. MaX carries that multi-stream conversation strategy forward, but places it under a new AI-driven control system.

“Hearing aid technology is increasingly becoming very one-dimensional,” said Barinder Samra, MSc, who presented the platform’s audiology story. “We know DNNs can improve noise reduction. The real question is: Can we take it further?”

Signia’s answer is four task-specific DNNs operating as one coordinated “brain”:

1. Speech Detection DNN detects and isolates relevant voices

2. Own-Voice Detection DNN recognizes when the wearer is speaking

3. Scene Analysis DNN analyzes the overall ambient environment

4. Noise Processing DNN identifies and evaluates competing noise

The system then shares information across the four DNNs, enabling the coordination of four corresponding core AI-processing strategies:

1. RealTime Conversation Enhancement (RTCE) AI

2. Own Voice Processing AI

3. Ambient Scene Adaptation AI

4. Dynamic Noise Control AI

According to Signia, the networks were trained with 40 million sound samples encompassing 11 languages, 6 music genres, thousands of real voices, and a wide variety of listening environments. The hearing aids also exchange information binaurally so the left and right devices make a coordinated decision rather than responding independently.

Sebastian Best, a Signia R&D audiology leader, said the company deliberately avoided a single giant neural network designed to do everything. A large general-purpose network, he explained, would require more energy and training data and could be harder to expand. “Task-specific DNNs give us a scalable architecture,” said Best. “If we want to add another capability in the future, we can add another specialized strength to the system.”

Signia's Sebastian Best (shown) and Barinder Samra explained the components and concepts behind Acoustic Intelligence.

One Restaurant, Several Different Listening Needs

Samra illustrated the concept with a familiar scenario. A hearing aid wearer arrives early at a busy restaurant and waits alone at the bar. There is noise, but no active conversation.

A conventional system might detect that the noise has crossed a threshold and aggressively reduce it. MaX instead considers several dimensions: the setting is indoors; the noise is speech babble; no one is addressing the wearer; and the wearer is not speaking. The system can take the edge off the noise while preserving enough ambiance to keep the person immersed in the room.

When friends arrive, the acoustic environment may be almost identical, but the listening goal changes completely. Multiple people begin talking and laughing, the wearer joins in, and the conversation shifts quickly around the table. MaX responds by increasing speech contrast, tracking the different talkers through RTCE AI, and activating OVP AI whenever the wearer speaks.

“The environment hasn’t changed, but the moment has changed,” Samra said. “You don’t just want to be present and comfortable; you want to contribute to the conversation.”

This is the most important distinction Signia is drawing between MaX and hearing aids that primarily apply DNN processing as a powerful denoising layer. MaX is designed to use AI continuously to decide how multiple processing systems should interact.

RTCE AI and Own Voice Processing Without Training

RealTime Conversation Enhancement AI is the evolution of Signia IX’s signature RTCE speech-in-noise and speech-tracking features. Signia says the new speech-detection DNN processes 75% more data points than the IX platform and identifies speech in about 50 milliseconds, allowing the system to quickly lock onto conversation partners and rebalance the scene as speakers alternate.

Own Voice Processing has also undergone a major overhaul. Signia introduced OVP to reduce the unnatural or overly loud sound many people experience when first wearing hearing aids. Previously, in IX, OVP required a brief training procedure in the fitting software so the hearing aids could learn the wearer’s voice. Removing the calibration step could make the feature more consistently available in everyday fittings: Signia has previously linked OVP use to lower hearing aid return rates—particularly among first-time wearers.

With MaX, OVP AI is designed to work immediately, without calibration. Because the DNN has been trained on thousands of voices, Signia says that, straight out of the box, it can recognize virtually any wearer.

That may sound like a convenience feature, but Best argues it is part of the larger conversation system. Strong directionality and noise reduction can make a wearer perceive the room as quieter, leading to unintentionally soft speech that others may not hear. By coordinating speech enhancement with processing of the wearer’s own voice, MaX helps the user hear others while still monitoring and projecting their own voice naturally.

Dynamic Noise Control AI doesn't just determine how much noise is present, but what type of noise and what the wearer is doing—so it can prioritize speech and maximize contrast.

Continuous Scene Adaptation Instead of “Listening Buckets”

Traditional hearing aids often classify sound into situational categories such as quiet, speech in noise, music, or car. MaX is designed to move beyond those relatively fixed “listening buckets” through continuous Ambient Scene Adaptation AI.

The system combines learned information about real-world scenes with live acoustic and sensor data, including reverberation, spectral structure, temporal changes, music, and motion. Signia says MaX evaluates a solution space of more than 800 million possible optimizations per second.

Dynamic Noise Control AI similarly tries to determine not only how much noise is present, but what type of noise it is and what the wearer is doing. In a noisy conversation, the system can prioritize speech and maximize contrast. If no conversation is taking place, it can gradually restore more environmental awareness.

Traffic is a good example. Simply reducing traffic noise as much as possible might make listening more comfortable, but it could also remove information needed for safety. Signia says MaX recognizes that distinction and preserves greater awareness when the sound scene calls for it.

During our time trying out MaX, I was impressed by how it handled ambient sound. When we were strolling through an outdoor marketplace, I could hear the voices of people at various tables as we passed by, and it had a natural “outdoor, open sound.” When our group stopped to chat, the crowd noise became slightly attenuated, and the speaker’s voice popped to the forefront. In my perception, it slightly raised the treble in voices when things got louder (a common feature of DNN hearing aids “lifting voices” out of noise), but it wasn’t as noticeable as on some hearing aids I’ve tried.

Signia MaX and charger.

A More Powerful Chip—and “OneConnect” Connectivity

Running four DNNs continuously requires a major increase in computing power. Signia says the new MaX chip offers 54 times the processing power and twice the memory of the IX platform, while being 50% more energy efficient.

Acoustic Intelligence is designed to remain active throughout the day rather than be reserved for a special program, and Signia says the hearing aid has up to 30 hours of battery life, though this varies depending on usage, including audio streaming, the listening environment, and battery age.

Signia also introduced what it calls OneConnect Technology. The Pure Charge&Go MaX 7 device we tried out in Munich combines Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth LE Audio with Auracast capability, and a telecoil in one hearing aid. For clinicians, this means fewer compatibility questions; for wearers, it should mean broad support across phones, computers, broadcast audio systems, and traditional telecoil/loop environments.

Signia notes the new devices will have Auracast ready for shared and public audio experiences as they roll out, and full Auracast functionality will be enabled via a firmware update delivered through the Signia One app by March 2027.

In developing the new MaX, special care has also gone into updating the overall Signia sound design with SoundSmoothing 2.0 to manage sudden transient sounds and eWindscreen 2.0 for effective wind noise management, while always preserving speech. Additionally, real-time customer support in the Signia Assistant has been expanded with natural-language troubleshooting.

Lise Henningsen and Niels Sogaard Jensen provide clinical evidence on the effectiveness of the new Signia MaX hearing aid platform.

What Signia’s Early Evidence Shows

Signia research audiologists Lise Henningsen and Niels Sogaard Jensen presented several technical and human-performance studies, some still ongoing in preparation for the launch.

A classic benchmark is to test the percentage advantage of a new technology for speech understanding in noise. Two pre-launch investigations were conducted. At Signia’s ORCA USA research facility, Jensen said a 10-20 percentage-point advantage in speech understanding was found for MaX over two competitors in a simulated group conversation test setup. Another pre-launch study from HörZentrum Oldenburg showed an advantage of 19-34 percentage points, again depending on the competitor. Signia also reports that 97% of wearers tested performed better with MaX in noisy group conversations compared with key competitors, and that MaX ranked No. 1 for SNR performance in group conversation in noise.

Final updated data will be presented at launch, and three white papers have been planned.

In an exceptionally impressive demonstration, Homayoun Kamkar-Parsi, PhD, Erin McAlister Boujon, AuD, and Henrik Tilsted used newly developed software that showed how each of their voices was captured and processed by the DNNs in MaX. As Dr. Parsi wore the hearing aids, the three sat around a table amid diffuse background noise, and the software showed how the MaX hearing aids focused on Boujon and Tilsted in real time as each spoke and the environment changed. This was something of a “wow” moment, as I was almost equally impressed with MaX’s performance as with how effectively the software appeared to demonstrate user benefit. I was left thinking this may be a breakthrough clinical demonstration tool.

Homayoun Kamkar-Parsi (center), who is wearing the MaX hearing aids, and Erin McAlister Boujon and Henrik Tilsted conduct a conversation around a table. The demonstration software on the screen behind them is showing where the DNN and directional microphones are picking up speech relative to Dr. Parsi and his Signia MaX hearing aids.

I’ll note that HearingTracker and our partner independent HearAdvisor lab are in the process of receiving and formally evaluating Signia C&G Pure MaX, and we look forward to sharing the results with our readers. The previous flagship Signia Pure C&G IX (Tech level 7) achieved a 4.5 HearAdvisor SoundScore and 4.4 HearingTracker score—placing it in the top-10% of all hearing aids we’ve evaluated to date.

Signia MaX: A Different AI Argument

MaX arrives after several competitors have made dedicated DNN processing a centerpiece of their premium hearing aids. Signia is not trying to win simply by claiming a larger denoising model. Instead, it argues that the more important advance is system-level intelligence: several specialized networks that coordinate the complete listening experience.

Can MaX help wearers follow evolving group conversations, hear their own voice naturally, stay aware of their surroundings, and make fewer manual adjustments? Four DNNs may not be inherently better than one, and impressive processing specs and software demos do not guarantee better outcomes. Still, what I heard while wearing the hearing aid and watching the demos was promising and represents a logical next step from IX. RealTime Conversation Enhancement established Signia’s focus on dynamic conversations; MaX adds an AI-based control layer intended to understand the full scene and adapt the entire system to the wearer’s current needs.

As José Alves told attendees while reflecting on Signia’s history and ambitions, “What brought us here was being different, not just being the same.”

With MaX, Signia’s difference is a hearing aid that does not simply ask, “How much noise should we remove?” It asks a broader question: What does this person need from this moment, especially when they want to ‘live noisy’?

Availability

Signia MaX will be available August 24 in the United States, Germany, and the Nordic countries, with most remaining markets following later in 2026. Available in eight color options, the Pure C&G MaX is designed to suit a wide range of wearers’ hearing losses and lifestyles.

It ships with a pocket-size portable charger that stores up to 4 full charges, provides a full charge in 4 hours, and delivers up to 6 hours of runtime from just 30 minutes of charging.