Individual binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs) were recorded at a distance of 1.5 m for azimuth angles of 0 and 50 in a reverberant room. Spectral details were reduced in either the direct or the reverberant part of the BRIRs by averaging the magnitude responses with band-pass filters. For various filter bandwidths, the modified BRIRs were convolved with broadband noise and listeners judged the perceived position of the noise when virtualized over headphones. Only reductions in spectral details of the direct part obtained with filter bandwidths broader than one equivalent rectangular bandwidth affected externalization. Reductions in spectral details of the reverberant part had only little influence on externalization. In both conditions, externalization was not as pronounced at 0 as at 50 . To characterize the auditory processes that may be involved in the perception of externalization, a quantitative model is proposed. The model includes an echo-suppression mechanism, a filterbank describing the frequency selectivity in the cochlea and a binaural stage that measures the deviations of the interaural level differences between the considered input and the unmodified input. These deviations, integrated across frequency, are then mapped to a value that corresponds to the perceived externalization.

This study investigated the effects of fast-acting hearing-aid compression on normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners' spatial perception in a reverberant environment. Three compression schemes—independent compression at each ear, linked compression between the two ears, and “spatially ideal” compression operating solely on the dry source signal—were considered using virtualized speech and noise bursts. Listeners indicated the location and extent of their perceived sound images on the horizontal plane. Linear processing was considered as the reference condition. The results showed that both independent and linked compression resulted in more diffuse and broader sound images as well as internalization and image splits, whereby more image splits were reported for the noise bursts than for speech. Only the spatially ideal compression provided the listeners with a spatial percept similar to that obtained with linear processing. The same general pattern was observed for both listener groups. An analysis of the interaural coherence and direct-to-reverberant ratio suggested that the spatial distortions associated with independent and linked compression resulted from enhanced reverberant energy. Thus, modifications of the relation between the direct and the reverberant sound should be avoided in amplification strategies that attempt to preserve the natural sound scene while restoring loudness cues.

Fast-acting hearing-aid compression systems typically distort the auditory cues involved in the spatial perception of sounds in rooms by enhancing low-level reverberant energy portions of the sound relative to the direct sound. The present study investigated the benefit of a direct-sound driven compression system that adaptively selects appropriate time constants to preserve the listener's spatial impression. Specifically, fast-acting compression was maintained for time-frequency units dominated by the direct sound while the processing of the compressor was linearized for time-frequency units dominated by reverberation. This compression scheme was evaluated with normal-hearing listeners who indicated their perceived location and distribution of sound images in the horizontal plane for virtualized speech. The experimental results confirmed that both independent compression at each ear and linked compression across ears resulted in broader, sometimes internalized, sound images as well as image splits. In contrast, the linked direct-sound driven compression system provided the listeners with a spatial perception similar to that obtained with linear processing that served as the reference condition. The independent direct-sound driven compressor created a sense of movement of the sound between the two ears, suggesting that preserving the interaural level differences via linked compression is advantageous with the proposed direct-sound driven compression scheme.

The sound perception in enclosed spaces is dominated by the room acoustics properties of the enclosures. Today, it is known that reverberation generated by walls and obstacles challenges hearing-impaired people, even with hearing aids, and several studies have been conducted to address this problem. However, relatively little is known about how various signal processing blocks (i.e., beamforming, wide dynamic range compression) within hearing aids affect the reverberation content of the speech signals. Aim of this work was to investigate and quantify the effects of wide dynamic range compression on the reverberant component of speech signals employing both subjective and objective methods. Several objective metrics which correlate with reverberation were applied on the speech signals before and after the compression. Moreover, a listening test with 14 normal hearing participants was performed to assess whether the changes in the reverberation content of the compressed signals were perceivable. The perceptual results show that the gain model changed the perception of reverberation of the speech signals tested. Finally, the correlation between the objective metrics and the perceptual results of the listening test was then investigated, indicating increased reverberation content for the compressed signals.

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