What is it about?
Good audio quality helps promote enjoyment of the listening experience. Reproduced audio has often been processed by many different types of electronics in order to get it from the sound producer to the listener. Much of this processing is necessary, but often changes the sound quality in the process. This paper looks at the processing used in three different types of hearing aids and its effect on quality.
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Why is it important?
Hearing aids are primarily used by people with degraded hearing; the degradations often cause them to miss out on subtleties in the sound. Since we used commercial hearing aids, it was not possible to provide a scientifically required exact match between the processing in each aid. We therefore also included a group with non-degraded hearing to perform sound quality judgements. . In this group, we compared the hearing aid processing to what the sound would be like with no processing, ie via an open ear. This comparison was free from the degradations of impaired hearing. The pattern of results between the two groups helps tease out what are the important features of the sound that are being used to judge the sound quality.
Perspectives
Among other things, the hearing aid modifies both the dynamics of a signal, as well as the bandwidth, the range of frequencies that will be rendered audible to the listener. These two features are also modified in any reproduced audio, such as in broadcasting, podcasts and tele-conferencing. Independent of hearing status, most people therefore experience on a daily basis the effects on dynamics and frequency range. We show that, although a more cavalier approach can be applied to speech signals, reproduction of music demands much care.
Michael Stone
University of Manchester
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Perceived Sound Quality of Hearing Aids With Varying Placements of Microphone and Receiver, American Journal of Audiology, March 2023, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2022_aja-22-00061.
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