ATU748 – Auracast and the Future of Hearing Technology with Jason Rude of Simeon

Hi, my name is Jason Rude. I’m the president of Simeon, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs.

I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 748 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on September 26th, 2025.

On today’s show, we welcome Jason Rude, president of Simeon Supportive Hearing Systems. He’s here to not just talk about all the great things that Simeon’s able to offer, but also we get to dig a little bit into Auracast, what is it, who does it help, and how does it differ from what’s available out there right now.

Also, don’t forget, folks, we’re rapidly approaching our next INDATA full day training. If you’re looking for information on our INDATA full day trainings, I’ll put some links down in the show notes that you can register, check out the archives and find out more information about those full day trainings.

But without any further ado, folks, let’s go ahead and get on with the show. Today, listeners, we are lucky enough to have Jason Rude on the show. Now Jason is the president of Simeon, and he is here to talk about some of the great things they offer, dig into the world of sound field systems, and discuss Auracast and how it can benefit individuals who are hard of hearing. Jason, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, Josh. I appreciate being here.

Yeah, I’m excited to get into the conversation. But before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, sure. So I’ve been the president of Simeon just under two years. Simeon has kind of a funny little origin story, so headquartered in Toronto, Canada, and really, Simeon has been around since 1995. Started by a fellow by the name of Paul Toner, and I bought the business from Paul just under two years ago when he indicated a desire to retire and kind of stepped back from the day-to-day operations of the company.

And so having taken over, I’ve been expanding the business to the US, so just last year actually, we opened up an office and distribution site in Melrose Park, Illinois so that we can expand the business outside of Canada and be a fully North American company. So quite an interesting little journey we’ve had. My background is actually as an industrial engineer, so I’m not native to the assistive technology world, but my engineering background does come in handy with new product development and some of the technology that we bring to the marketplace.

Awesome. We’ll get into some of that new technology here very soon, but I always love hearing how folks do come to the assistive technology space and find out about it and everything. And Jason, before we get into talking about the tech, about the things that Simeon offers, I think it’s important for our listeners to learn a little bit about sound field systems. So I guess let’s talk a little bit about sound field systems as a whole. What are they and how do they work?

Yeah, so it’s a great question, and really we got our start, like I said, back in 1995, specifically focusing on schools and students who have hearing loss, because we found that they were being held back. Now, the law in both the US and Canada requires that schools mainstream students where possible. That means that assistive technology can be used to try to level the playing field.

Now, that’s important because you never want to separate a student from their peers, from their neighbors, from their friends, when they can be in the same class as all of their friends, all the people that they grow up with. And so if you can provide in our world, hearing assistive technology that enables them to hear everything that’s going around in the classroom, then they have a level playing field with all other students. Now, a sound field system is pretty simple.

It is a small amplification system that broadcasts the teacher’s voice. And then in our system, it is a portable system, which is intriguing, because the class sometimes leaves the confines of the classroom and goes to the library or to the computer lab, or to the art studio or the music room. The modern class needs to be able to move throughout the school campus and be able to provide the amplification throughout that. So our systems are portable. They have a lithium ion battery that provides eight hours of continuous use, amplifying the teacher, and we have a pass-around mic for all of the other students to use so that a student who has hearing loss can be able to hear their peers, they can participate in class discussions, they can ask questions, knowing that nobody asked that same question a few minutes ago.

So there’s no hesitancy for a student with hearing loss or hearing aids to be able to participate fully in class activities.

Nice. And yeah, you brought up a great point of just inclusion and keeping everyone in the same classroom as much as you can, because not only is that beneficial for the student with hearing loss or with another disability, but also for all the other students, I feel like, just being able to see that people are a little bit different. I think if you’re exposed to that as a child, as an adult, it’s so much easier to, I don’t know, accept or just think it’s commonplace.

And I know I’ve talked to a lot of folks in the AT field that it’s through seeing other individuals use assistive technology that they found their love of it and ended up kind of going on with it. So I love that you’re able to offer those kind of supports.

Well, and that’s exactly right, Josh, because a sound field system that is amplifying the teacher’s voice has a lot of real true benefits, especially academically. There have been some academic studies that showed that just general amplification in the classroom can produce better literacy scores, for example. Students are, they’re able to retain information better when it’s amplified, and then especially students who have auditory processing deficit.

And that’s probably a larger percentage of students than we fully appreciate, that have auditory processing deficit, meaning that not all of neurological activity in the brain is fully developed. And so amplification has been proven to be especially important with folks with APD. So really, it does benefit everybody, and frankly, Josh, the teachers love it because they don’t have to shout. They can take command of the class. They can get everybody’s attention without having to be screaming and yelling throughout the day.

So yeah, amplification has a ton of benefits, and it’s nice when you have a system that just sits discreetly on a shelf in the classroom, it doesn’t require a lot of attention, and it just brings a lot of organization to the class.

Most certainly. Most certainly. Well, Jason, one of the reasons we had you on today was I’ve been hearing a lot about Auracast, and I really want to learn more about it. So I guess, what is Auracast?

Oh, Auracast is absolutely fascinating. And it’s not very often in the world of hearing assistive technology that we actually get our hands on a truly transformational technology. And so Auracast was developed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.

Now, this is an international standards body, so international, meaning this is really exciting. Auracast will be the same in China as it is in South Africa or Argentina or Nebraska, having an international standard, and like Bluetooth, anywhere in the world that you go, your iPhone can connect to a Bluetooth speaker in exactly the same way.

So Auracast is the same thing, except that it’s low energy. And this was a real requirement of the hearing aid manufacturers. And when they first approached the Bluetooth Special Interest Group way back in 2013, they said, “We need an audio transmission standard that will not drain our batteries.” And as you can imagine with hearing aids, it’s important to have a battery that’s going to last you a full day.

But Bluetooth being a one-to-one connection point is constantly draining batteries. And you’ll see this with your phone, with your Bluetooth devices, like your headphones, your earbuds, it drains the battery pretty fast. So the first thing that the Bluetooth Special Interest Group did is they came out with Bluetooth low energy audio, and then they morphed that into the Auracast standard. And they published that just recently, in 2022.

So it’s only since then that manufacturers like ourselves, Simeon, and then the hearing aid manufacturers, have really been able to leverage Auracast in our devices. So we’ve started to put Auracast into our new device that’s coming out later this year. But it’s really exciting to see all of the hearing aid manufacturers start to put Auracast into their hearing aids and cochlear implants.

Right now, currently we have Resound, but actually by the time this airs, we may see several more hearing aid manufacturers announce their pathway to enabling Auracast in cochlear implants and hearing aids.

Oh, that’s awesome. And besides being the low energy, how else does Auracast kind of differ from standard or other versions of Bluetooth?

So Auracast is nice because it’s not a one-to-one pairing. And so imagine in public spaces, like airports, train stations, the subway system, anytime where there’s an audible message being put forth over some type of a PA system, basically an unlimited number of users can be able to receive that Auracast signal directly to their hearing assistive technology.

And this is also exciting because it isn’t just for individuals with hearing loss. Those with conventional hearing that are using Auracast-enabled headphones or earbuds will also be able to wear them, let’s say in an airport or in a theater, and get improved audio directly to their ears.

What’s exciting in public spaces, so imagine in an airport and you get to your gate and you want the gate announcements for gate number 38 in terminal one. Now, if you’re just relying on the speakers that are scattered throughout the airport, you’re going to be getting the gate announcements for your gate and about five others that are in the same vicinity.

But with Auracast, you’ll be able to get the gate announcements specifically from your gate, Gate 38. And not only that, you can go to the food court or you can go shopping or wander around the terminal, and you will get your gate announcements directly to your hearing aids or to your Auracast-enabled earbuds. So it’s really a convenience factor that’s very exciting for any of us who love hearing assistive technology.

But then in theaters, well, Auracast because again, it’s not a one-to-one connection. So it’s going to enable anybody in the theater, anybody who wishes to have that improved audio to their hearing aids or Auracast-enabled headphones, to be able to tap into that Auracast signal and in real time, in a low-latency environment, receive really high-quality audio. We’re in the testing phase, so we’re just months away from being able to launch our product, the Audita III, and this is going to be the first portable sound field system that will include Auracast.

Oh, nice.

And in our testing, the sound quality is amazing. All the higher frequencies that you need for speech intelligibility, the 4,000 to 8,000 hertz is crystal clear. Your Ss, your Ts, those consonants that come through that are important for speech intelligibility, Auracast was designed to enable a really clear signal with those higher frequencies. So it’s a really exciting technology and our own testing really proves it out.

Nice. And just to kind of touch on the things you talked about, I know even at the airport, as someone who’s not hard of hearing, sometimes it sounds like they’re trying to talk to you through a Wendy’s drive-through speaker from 1985. I can’t understand exactly what they’re saying. Are we boarding? Are we doing that? So just being able to have that information, and like you said, of course, that’s helpful to folks who are hard of hearing. But yeah, folks who are easily distracted or maybe have some other needs, it could definitely be helpful.

Or as you said, just to get the information you need, not have to listen, “Oh, what gate are they talking about? What flight are they mentioning?” And then talking a little bit kind of about the new device. So instead of just having the amplification, this is going to be able to send that information straight to individuals’ hearing aids, earbuds, whatever has that Auracast enabled. Is that right?

That’s right. But Josh, let me take a step back and just describe a little bit better what is happening today in a classroom.

The current hardware set up, so with us, Simeon, or even with any of our competitors that have classroom sound field systems, when you want to provide ear level amplification, meaning you want a sound field system that is amplifying for the whole class, everyone can hear it. It’s an improvement in the class experience for everybody. But you still want, and audiologists are very strict on this, they want an ear level amplification. And so today that is manufacturer-dependent.

If they have Phonak hearing aids, they need a Phonak transmitter. If they have Oticon hearing aids, they need an Oticon transmitter. If they have Resound or let’s say a cochlear implant, a Nucleus 8 cochlear implant, they need a manufacturer specific remote microphone that is currently today using Bluetooth technology to stream audio directly into those hearing aids or the cochlear implants.

So it is right now a separate piece of hardware that gets connected to the sound field system. Now, our sound field system, it works, it’s acoustically transparent. That’s important to educational audiologists who are affirming that the ear level audio is working for a student who has hearing aids or cochlear implants.

But that extra hardware, it has some glitchiness, it has some idiosyncrasies with it that teachers then get frustrated with trying to manage that. So what’s nice about Auracast is it simplifies the hardware piece because you no longer need that manufacturer-specific remote microphone to connect audio to the hearing aids.

That’s done away with, and now you have a clear, high quality Auracast signal coming directly from the sound field unit. So for us, we are labeling it the Audita III. The Audita III is designed for a classroom of about 30 kids. And so it’s amplifying and simultaneously delivering Auracast directly to the hearing aids. So it’s exciting in that it can simplify the classroom setup. That’s an improvement for the teachers.

It’s something less to manage. It’s manufacturer-agnostic because it’s a global standard, and all of the hearing aid manufacturers and those that manufacture cochlear implants are adopting the same standard. It eliminates any idiosyncrasies that might be true with a type of brand of hearing aid. So the remote microphones are gone and manufacturer-agnostic, you can use Auracast to go to any hearing aid.

Nice. And yeah, you brought up just the ease for the teacher to not have to try to mess with other devices, if they disconnect, if there’s any other kinds of issues or I’m just sitting here thinking, if I have three students in my class all who maybe wear hearing aids and they’re all different brands, what a pain that would be to have those three separate devices, to have to be able to make sure they’re working, make sure that I’ve set them all up and everything else. Whereas now they just connect once and there’s no extra pieces.

So that’s great accessibility and really kind of opens up the door for a lot of things and gives the teachers one less thing to have to worry about.

Yeah, that’s exactly right, Josh. And here’s something funny. The range of Auracast is surprisingly long. In our testing for the Audita III, the range is about 200 feet.

Oh, wow.

So you can imagine that a student who asks to go to the bathroom, and they’re hearing aids potentially can allow them to receive the teacher’s instructions all the way through their bathroom break, whether they like it or not. So they can remain connected. They come back to the classroom, there’s no gap in instruction, and there’s no lag in being able to reconnect to the Auracast signal if they’ve remained connected the whole time.

And in fact, even if you do go beyond the range within five minutes, it’ll still automatically reconnect to Auracast automatically without the teacher or the student having to do anything.

Oh, that’s awesome. That is absolutely great. Jason, you’ve probably got quite a few of these, and I know we’re talking about Auracast and some of the new stuff, but this can kind of relate back to some other things kind of with Simeon. But could you tell me a story about someone’s experience using one of your tools, a sound field system or anything like that, and how it’s really been able to make a positive impact or difference in their lives?

Well, actually, this is kind of an interesting story where it relates to teachers having to wear multiple remote microphones to be able to support different manufactured brands of hearing aids and cochlear implants. So this was a particular, it was actually a special ed classroom in the Midwest where the teacher was wearing five different remote microphones around her neck. And that’s one way to do it if you don’t have a sound field system. So there’s no amplification for the classroom, but the teacher’s voice is being amplified directly into the hearing aids.

The teacher at this time was wearing a Phonak Roger touchscreen for several Phonak-aided students, had an Oticon EduMic for Oticon-aided students, and then three students who had cochlear implants. And each of those cochlear implants had to have their own remote mic. So this particular teacher was wearing five remote microphones in sort of like a necklace around her neck.

We were able to eliminate that. So we had a splitter that enabled the teacher to plug in all five of them into our existing Audita II sound field system. So it was a great way for the teacher to eliminate that heavy necklace of remote microphones around her neck using only the Simeon pendant. So it simplifies the hardware that the teacher has to wear and then just connects all those remote microphones through a splitter into our Audita II system with acoustic transparency.

But that’s really where Auracast is so transformational. It enables us to completely take that to the next level. And the benefit, well, we know about the benefit to the students. The students get a high-quality audio signal to their hearing aids, so they don’t miss anything. Everything that’s spoken in the classroom is important.

And when they’re not missing anything, they’re at the same level as every other student. But we often put ourselves in the shoes of the teachers because they’re being asked to manage so much throughout the day, and technology keeps getting more and more complicated, and they have to learn these complicated interactive whiteboards, and they have to learn a lot of other different technology complications.

So we’re really happy that Auracast and our Simeon sound field systems can actually simplify something for the first time for teachers and just make the whole classroom experience more sustainable for them.

No, I think that’s great, because anything we can do to take the weight off of teachers who already have probably way too much to deal with and still be able to increase access for the students is an absolutely great thing. Jason, if our listeners want to find out more about Simeon and all the kind of great things you offer and the company itself, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Well, sure. Our website is www.simeonaudio.com. Simeon in ancient Greek meant someone who hears, the one who hears. So that’s kind of where Simeon comes from. Josh, I will say that while we got our start in classrooms, and when you do visit our website, you’ll get a lot of classroom-centric information because our sound field systems really are designed for those small groups, typical of a classroom of 30 kids.

But what excites us about Auracast and the fact that it’s manufacturer-agnostic is that it opens up a whole new variety of use cases and applications. And the use cases that I’m thinking about are those with seniors. In retirement communities, retirement communities and senior day centers, where there’s a lot of activities, and those activities generally revolve around someone communicating to a group, whether it’s a bingo game, whether it’s a travel log, a lecture, poetry reading. Auracast really enables us to be able to tap into seniors who all might have different brands of hearing aids or cochlear implants and seamlessly connect directly to that brand of hearing assistive technology.

And then of course, you’re amplifying it for all of the seniors who are not aided for whatever reason. So really excited about some of those use cases with retirement communities, houses of worship, funeral homes with graveside ceremonies and cemeteries, and so forth. So Auracast is transformational in that regard because it really enables a manufacturer agnostic way of connecting people and enabling their hearing.

And as you kind of brought that up, and I’m sitting there thinking of the best man’s speech at the wedding and being able to actually get that information straight to you, or we do a full day training sometimes in person and sitting there, I was like, “Wow, that’s a great tool to be able to broadcast that just straight to people.” And again, just be able to get that a little bit better access with no real extra work.

So yeah, that is a game-changer. And like you said, doesn’t even drain the battery while you’re using it. So that’s absolutely perfect. Well, Jason, thank you so much for coming on, for telling us about Simeon, for talking about Audiocast with us and just the amazing doors that it opens up for folks as well. So thank you again for coming on and telling us all about them.

Well, thank you, Josh, and it was a real pleasure. Really appreciate the opportunity to join you this morning.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on assistive technology update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721 7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org, or shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or INTRAC.

You can find out more about INTRAC at RelayIndiana.com. A special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly, the opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners or this host.

This was your assistive technology update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.