Abstract
Wireless remote microphones (RMs) transmit the desired acoustic signal to the hearing aid (HA) and facilitate enhanced listening in challenging environments. Fitting and verification of RMs, and benchmarking the relative performance of different RM devices in varied acoustic environments are of significant interest to Audiologists and RM developers. This paper investigates the application of instrumental speech intelligibility and quality metrics for characterizing the RM performance in two acoustic environments with varying amounts of background noise and reverberation. In both environments, two head and torso simulators (HATS) were placed 2 m apart, where one HATS served as the talker and the other served as the listener. Four RM systems were interfaced separately with a HA programmed to match the prescriptive targets for the N4 standard audiogram and placed on the listener HATS. The HA output in varied acoustic conditions was recorded and analyzed offline through computational models predicting speech intelligibility and quality. Results showed performance differences among the four RMs in the presence of noise and/or reverberation, with one RM exhibiting significantly better performance. Clinical implications and applications of these results are discussed.
Highlights
Communication in demanding environments is a significant challenge faced by hearing impaired (HI) individuals.[1]
Directional microphones result in 2-5 dB improvement in speech reception thresholds (SRTs) in favourable environmental settings, but this benefit decreases when reverberation and distance from the source are factored in.[2]
In such challenging acoustic environments, a wireless remote microphone (RM) system can significantly enhance the speech perception abilities of HI listeners [A typical wireless RM system is comprised of a microphone placed close to the desired sound source, a transmitter connected to the microphone for radio frequency (RF) modulation and transmission, and a receiver for demodulation and signal delivery to the hearing aid.]
Summary
Communication in demanding environments (e.g., noisy and/or reverberant environments) is a significant challenge faced by hearing impaired (HI) individuals.[1]. Lewis et al.[3] reported a mean directional advantage of 2.3 dB for speech understanding in a diffuse noise environment with data collected from forty-six adult HI listeners. Approximately 20 dB speech perception benefit was observed in the same environmental condition and with the same participant cohort when RMs were utilized. RMs are an attractive assistive listening device option for HI listeners and manuscript. VP supervised the data collection and data analysis, and require clinical attention for proper fitting and perrevised the manuscript. PF assisted in experimental setup and data colformance verification
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