Future Ear Spotlight: Larry Guterman
Today I want to shine the spotlight on Larry Guterman, co-founder of the company SonicCloud (Sonitum). Larry’s story is an interesting one. When he was in his college days, he experienced sudden hearing loss after a loud party, and his hearing then deteriorated from there on to the point where it became a profound hearing loss.
One of the biggest issues that Larry ran into with his hearing loss was that he couldn’t get high quality speech understanding on his phone calls. Hearing aids just weren’t a viable solution and since he traveled frequently as a Hollywood movie director, he struggled to have quality phone calls with his loved ones. So, he took matters into his own hands and the company started building their first product to solve this dilemma in 2016.
SonicCloud is a technology for personalizing streaming audio and phone calls designed for people with all levels of hearing loss. I caught up with Larry at the American Academy of Audiology convention and did the first-ever Future Ear Radio edition with a guest. During the short broadcast, Larry describes his technology and the intent behind it.
In short, while hearing aids provide an ambient solution for every-day noise in your physical surroundings, SonicCloud is software that functions as a “hearing aid for your digital environment” for all the sounds that come from your phone or computer. The app provides you with a fun, interactive hearing assessment to identify the type of hearing loss you have (there’s a big spectrum of the type of losses people have) to create your hearing profile that is then used as a filter for the audio coming from your computer and phone. You apply your sonic cloud hearing profile to your digital audio.
For Larry, it allows him to take crystal-clear phone calls with standard headphones, which is a godsend for him given the severity of his hearing loss. For those of you reading this that were at the Alexa conference, you may recognize Larry, as he and SonicCloud won the startup competition. As we continue to stream more video and audio, it’s technology like SonicCloud that will help those with hearing loss to enjoy their digital content and phone calls to the fullest extent.
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
To listen to the broadcast on your Alexa device, enable the skill here: https://www.amazon.com/Witlingo-Future-Ear-Radio/dp/B07PL9X5WK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=future+ear+radio&qid=1552337687&s=digital-skills&sr=1-1-catcorr
To listen on your Google Assistant device, enable the skill here: https://assistant.google.com/services/a/uid/00000059c8644238
and then say, “Alexa/Ok Google, launch Future Ear Radio.”
