Effect of a processing delay between direct and delayed sound in simulated open fit hearing aids on speech intelligibility in noise

Roth, Sebastian; Müller, Franz-Ullrich; Angermeier, Julian; Hemmert, Werner; Zirn, Stefan

doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1257720

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Processing delays itself are a disturbance that have been frequently reported to lead to decreased sound quality ( Lelic et al, 2022 ; Stone et al, 2008 ), and recently also poorer neural encoding of speech ( Zhou et al, 2024 ) and speech intelligibility in special situations ( Roth et al, 2024 ). They are thus another processing-related issue that should be discussed as a potential cause of the hearing device disadvantage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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(Why) Do Transparent Hearing Devices Impair Speech Perception in Collocated Noise?

Denk,

Wiederschein,

Kemper

et al. 2024

Trends in Hearing

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Hearing aids and other hearing devices should provide the user with a benefit, for example, compensate for effects of a hearing loss or cancel undesired sounds. However, wearing hearing devices can also have negative effects on perception, previously demonstrated mostly for spatial hearing, sound quality and the perception of the own voice. When hearing devices are set to transparency, that is, provide no gain and resemble open-ear listening as well as possible, these side effects can be studied in isolation. In the present work, we conducted a series of experiments that are concerned with the effect of transparent hearing devices on speech perception in a collocated speech-in-noise task. In such a situation, listening through a hearing device is not expected to have any negative effect, since both speech and noise undergo identical processing, such that the signal-to-noise ratio at ear is not altered and spatial effects are irrelevant. However, we found a consistent hearing device disadvantage for speech intelligibility and similar trends for rated listening effort. Several hypotheses for the possible origin for this disadvantage were tested by including several different devices, gain settings and stimulus levels. While effects of self-noise and nonlinear distortions were ruled out, the exact reason for a hearing device disadvantage on speech perception is still unclear. However, a significant relation to auditory model predictions demonstrate that the speech intelligibility disadvantage is related to sound quality, and is most probably caused by insufficient equalization, artifacts of frequency-dependent signal processing and processing delays.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This does not mean that a delay cannot cause a hearing aid disadvantage regarding speech intelligibility when a more vented fitting is used as in common practice. Indeed, Roth et al (2024) recently predicted SRT disadvantages due to delays in open-fit monaural, but not bilateral fits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%