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Signal processing algorithm effective for sound quality of hearing loss simulators

Toshio Irino, Shintaro Doan, Minami Ishikawa

TL;DR

Experimental results showed that WHIS with DTVF produces less perceptible distortion in speech sounds than CamHLS and WHIS with FBAS, even when the nonlinear process is working.

Abstract

Hearing loss (HL) simulators, which allow normal hearing (NH) listeners to experience HL, have been used in speech intelligibility experiments, but not in sound quality experiments due to perceptible distortion. If they produced less distortion, they might be useful for NH listeners to evaluate the sound quality of, for example, hearing aids. We conducted perceptual sound quality experiments to compare the Cambridge version of HL simulator (CamHLS) and the Wakayama version of the HL simulator (WHIS), which has the two algorithms of filterbank analysis synthesis (FBAS) and direct time-varying filter (DTVF). The experimental results showed that WHIS with DTVF produces less perceptible distortion in speech sounds than CamHLS and WHIS with FBAS, even when the nonlinear process is working. This advantage is mainly due to the use of the DTVF algorithm, which could be applied to various signal synthesis applications with filterbank analysis.

Signal processing algorithm effective for sound quality of hearing loss simulators

TL;DR

Experimental results showed that WHIS with DTVF produces less perceptible distortion in speech sounds than CamHLS and WHIS with FBAS, even when the nonlinear process is working.

Abstract

Hearing loss (HL) simulators, which allow normal hearing (NH) listeners to experience HL, have been used in speech intelligibility experiments, but not in sound quality experiments due to perceptible distortion. If they produced less distortion, they might be useful for NH listeners to evaluate the sound quality of, for example, hearing aids. We conducted perceptual sound quality experiments to compare the Cambridge version of HL simulator (CamHLS) and the Wakayama version of the HL simulator (WHIS), which has the two algorithms of filterbank analysis synthesis (FBAS) and direct time-varying filter (DTVF). The experimental results showed that WHIS with DTVF produces less perceptible distortion in speech sounds than CamHLS and WHIS with FBAS, even when the nonlinear process is working. This advantage is mainly due to the use of the DTVF algorithm, which could be applied to various signal synthesis applications with filterbank analysis.
Paper Structure (18 sections, 3 equations, 3 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 18 sections, 3 equations, 3 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Algorithms of HL simulators
  3. CamHLS
  4. WHIS
  5. Analysis algorithm
  6. Synthesis algorithm
  7. Perceptual experiments
  8. Sound material
  9. Speech sounds
  10. Instrument sounds
  11. HL simulation
  12. Experimental procedure
  13. Training and practice sessions
  14. Participants and audio settings
  15. Result
  16. ...and 3 more sections

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: Block diagrams of hearing loss simulators. See Section \ref{['sec:AlgorithmHLS']} for detail.
  • Figure 2: Relationship between the hearing level, the active HL, and the passive HL in the audiogram (adapted from the GUI version of WHIS irino2023hearing). The green line shows the hearing level of NH; the black line shows the average hearing level of the 70-year-old male (70-yr) listeners iso7029; the magenta line represents the active HL, $HL_{act}$, that appears on the audiogram. The difference between the magenta and black lines is the passive HL, $HL_{pas}$.
  • Figure 3: Mean (bar) and 99% confidence interval (error bar). Double asterisks (**) indicate the HL conditions whose means were significantly different from $\rm WHIS_d^{(0.5)}$ using Tukey's HSD tests at the 0.01 significance level.