Soundhawk was an American corporation headquartered in Cupertino, California. In June 2014 Soundhawk introduced a "Smart Listening System", a hearing aid designed for noisy situations. The Soundhawk product came with three pieces of hardware: an earphone called a "Scoop", a wireless microphone, and a charging case. The product line used mobile applications and could be personalized to different environments. The company has been defunct since around 2016.

Company history

Soundhawk was founded by

Rodney Perkins Rodney Perkins (born 1936), a physician and entrepreneur, is Professor of Surgery at the Stanford School of Medicine. Biography Born in 1936, Perkins grew up in Evansville, Indiana. He attended Indiana University, initially enrolling as a dent ...

Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...

Otologist Otology is a branch of medicine which studies normal and pathological anatomy and physiology of the ear (hearing and vestibular sensory systems and related structures and functions) as well as their diseases, diagnosis and treatment. Otologic ...

. He is also the founder of ReSound and the California Ear Institute at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

Executive leadership at Soundhawk includes Perkins as CEO; Drew Dundas, formerly director of Audiology and Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology at UCSF as President and Chief Technology Officer; Steve Manser former engineering leader at

Apple, Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

, Palm, Inc., and

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

, as Chief Operations Officer and Vice President of Engineering. The Soundhawk product was built by a group of former hardware and software engineers from Palm, Inc.,

, and Amazon.com. Soundhawk is backed by True Ventures,

Foxconn Technology Group Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Hon Hai Technology Group in China and Taiwan and Foxconn internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer established in 1974 with headquarters in Tucheng, New Ta ...

and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Soundhawk has suspended operation as per their official website, which as of October 1, 2016 reads "down for maintenance, check back soon". As of March 2018, support pages are no longer available as the domain name connections have expired; nor can it be found through the Apple Store. Amazon.com also lists the device, but says it's currently not available, and they don't know when it will be.

Product

Soundhawk's Smart Listening System included three pieces of hardware: the Scoop, the Wireless Mic and the Charging Case. This system was controlled via a mobile app. The Soundhawk app was used to set up and personalize the system and was available for download to iOS and Android. The app enabled individual hearing profiles to be created for different acoustic environments. The Scoop was an earphone that used adaptive audio processing to enhance specific sound frequencies while reducing background noise. The Scoop connects to users' phones or tablets via Bluetooth. The system's wireless mic was used to identify specific sounds in different environments to facilitate noise cancellation. The mic could be clipped to clothing, or placed on a table. The product also came with a charging case, and could also be used for phone calls or other smartphone functions such as virtual assistants.

References

External links

* {{authority control Wearable devices Audiology organizations Bluetooth software Sound technology