FORMANT-BASED PROCESSING FOR HEARING-AIDS

被引:4
作者
BLAMEY, PJ
DOOLEY, GJ
ALCANTARA, JI
GERIN, ES
SELIGMAN, PM
机构
[1] Cooperative Research Centre for Bionic Ear, Speech, and Hearing Research, East Melbourne, 3002
关键词
SPEECH PERCEPTION; SPEECH PROCESSING; BACKGROUND NOISE; HEARING AIDS;
D O I
10.1016/0167-6393(93)90044-L
中图分类号
O42 [声学];
学科分类号
070206 ; 082403 ;
摘要
A body-worn hearing aid has been developed with the ability to estimate formant frequencies and amplitudes in real time. These parameters can be used to enhance the output signal by ''sharpening'' the formant peaks, by ''mapping'' the amplitudes of the formants onto the available dynamic range of hearing at each frequency, or by resynthesizing a speech signal that is suited to the listener's hearing characteristics. The aid can also be used in a ''frequency response tailoring'' mode similar to a conventional hearing aid. Initial evaluations of the the peak sharpening mode produced small improvements in speech perception for three groups of subjects: (a) Five severely-to-profoundly hearing-impaired people scored 7% higher on average when using the formant-based hearing aid combined with a multiple-electrode cochlear implant compared with their implant and their conventional hearing aid together. (b) A hearing aid user with a severe hearing loss scored 11% higher with a ''peak-sharpened'' signal than with his own conventional hearing aid. (c) Four normally hearing listeners showed a mean improvement of 19% in the perception of vowels and a decrease of 5% for consonants in background noise when the signal was processed. These preliminary results illustrate some potential effects of formant-based processing.
引用
收藏
页码:453 / 461
页数:9
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