Abstract
Processing delays are a disturbing factor in hearing devices, especially with vented or open fits. While the disturbance due to delays is well characterized, neither have the perception thresholds of delays been systematically assessed, nor are the perceptual detection mechanisms clear. This study presents experiments determining the delay detection thresholds in simulated linear vented hearing devices in normal-hearing listeners, where spectral effects of delays were either compensated or not. Furthermore, the psychometric function for the detection of delays was determined for an example condition and linked to model predictions, showing that delay detection can be well predicted from spectral artefacts.
Highlights
Digital hearing devices like hearing aids or hearables allow for flexible advanced signal processing techniques like adaptive noise reduction or dynamic compression tailored to the needs of a user
While a delay of several milliseconds is too short to be perceived as an echo, the interference of leakage and hearing device output leads to spectral ripples, which can provide a prominent spectral cue
The 1=fh dependence is stronger for peak compensation, where most delay perception thresholds with speech and pink noise can be apprÀoximaÁted reasonably well as 0.35/fh
Summary
Digital hearing devices like hearing aids or hearables allow for flexible advanced signal processing techniques like adaptive noise reduction or dynamic compression tailored to the needs of a user. Since most modern hearing aids and many hearables feature a vented, loose, or open fit to improve the wearing comfort, the disturbing effects of processing delays are one critical issue that limit the performance and acceptance of current hearing devices. To our best knowledge, the thresholds for the detection of processing delays have not been assessed systematically In consequence, it is not clear what the exact perceptual mechanism for the detection of processing delays looks like. While a delay of several milliseconds is too short to be perceived as an echo, the interference of leakage and hearing device output leads to spectral ripples, which can provide a prominent spectral cue. The effect of complete elimination of spectral cues on the delay detection threshold would give important insights on the perceptual detection mechanisms, such a compensation of spectral ripples is arguably not applicable in real hearing devices
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