Perceptual audio evaluation by hearing-impaired listeners – some considerations on task training
Abstract
Use of perceptual audio evaluation is widespread in the audio and telecommunication areas and is also relevant to hearing-aid research, as it addresses artifacts of signal processing in hearing aids. However, in hearing-aid research, listeners are typically hearing impaired and this poses a challenge for the training material; the impaired hearing system differs markedly from the normal hearing system and shows large, individual, and highly unpredictable variation. This was demonstrated in a pilot study in the form of a listening experiment with music and speech stimuli, processed to generate different degrees of non-linear artifacts. Six subjects with mild- to-moderate, sloping hearing losses were tested after some initial training. Results were contradictory, but seemed to indicate that the subjects were not able to detect differences in sound quality. A stepwise training procedure was therefore developed for perceptual audio evaluation targeting hearing impaired listeners, which was inspired by Bech and Zacharov [Perceptual Audio Evaluation - Theory, Method and Application (2006)]. Key issues in the training procedure are priming to the artifacts under study and a test- ow that facilitates errorless learning. Using this training procedure in an experiment with the same type of stimuli as before, the results showed that differences in sound quality were detected in the 2-5 kHz region. These results hint at a need for careful designed training when hearing impaired listeners are to be used for perceptual audio evaluation.
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