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As I am doing my research into this wonderful world of cochlear implantation, I am focusing on what I believe is the single most important piece of the puzzle - the internal electrode array. That is what causes an implantee to marry a specific brand for life. I've learned about Med El's electrode arrays, and like their features such as electrode positioning and the wavy wiring versus straight wiring to be more flexible within the cochlea itself. Now, I am curious as to the technology of the little "black box" which I presume is like a graphic equalizer which takes the input from the processor received by the internal coil and separates it by frequency and sends the specific frequency to the correct electrode for stimulation. But I want to know more about whats inside and how it does what it does. Being an ex IT professional, I am curious is this more of an "intel" versus "AMD" architecture issue between the companies, or are they all using the same technology within, just branding it differently. Like batteries or antifreeze, there are only one or two manufacturers who MAKE the product, but each company labels and may make superficial changes to be able to call the battery or antifreeze "theirs". Hope I am not too techie with this post, but if Im going to marry something for life, I wanna know all the skeletons in the closet before I commit. ;P Thanks, FarmTownBob!