Abstract
A multimicrophone speech enhancement algorithm for binaural hearing aids that preserves interaural time delays was proposed recently. The algorithm is based on multichannel Wiener filtering and relies on a voice activity detector (VAD) for estimation of second-order statistics. Here, the effect of a VAD on the speech enhancement of this algorithm was evaluated using an envelope-based VAD, and the performance was compared to that achieved using an ideal error-free VAD. The performance was considered for stationary directional noise and nonstationary diffuse noise interferers at input SNRs from ?10 to +5?dB. Intelligibility-weighted SNR improvements of about 20?dB and 6?dB were found for the directional and diffuse noise, respectively. No large degradations (<1?dB) due to the use of envelope-based VAD were found down to an input SNR of 0?dB for the directional noise and ?5?dB for the diffuse noise. At lower input SNRs, the improvement decreased gradually to 15?dB for the directional noise and 3?dB for the diffuse noise.
Highlights
An increasing number of people suffer from hearing loss, a deficit that can limit them in their interaction with the surrounding world and often severely reduces their quality of life
Using the envelope-based voice activity detector (VAD) does not result in large degradations (
Noise reduction performance deteriorated with decreasing SNR, a robust gain of about 15 dB is still obtained at −10 dB input SNR
Summary
An increasing number of people suffer from hearing loss, a deficit that can limit them in their interaction with the surrounding world and often severely reduces their quality of life. People with sensorineural hearing loss often find it difficult to understand speech in the presence of background noise, even when wearing their hearing aids. Consequences of sensorineural hearing loss vary from one individual to another, but factors that often contribute are reduced audibility, loudness recruitment, reduced frequency selectivity, and reduced temporal resolution. At SNRs comparable to the SRT, a small increase in SNR can improve the intelligibility scores drastically as a 1 dB increase can lead to an improvement of up to 15% [4] This implies that even a few dB of elevated SRT in HI listeners can cause substantial problems understanding speech compared to NH listeners. Many HI listeners could benefit from a noise reduction of about 5 dB [3], depending on the acoustical environment
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