How to compare hearing-aid processing of real speech and a speech-modified stimulus for objective validation of hearing-aid fittings?
Keywords:
Hearing aid, Auditory steady-state response, Coupler gain, Noise reductionAbstract
A method is proposed to evaluate whether a modern hearing aid with all automatic features enabled processes a speech-modified stimulus for objective validation of hearing-aid fittings as speech. The proposed method measures short-term coupler gains from brief snippets of steady-state probe noise, crossfaded into either the International Speech Test Signal (ISTS) or the speech-modified stimulus, which thus act as conditioning signals. For reference, the method is also applied to a steady-steady noise signal, which drives the hearing aids into noise mode. Results for a selection of hearing aids show that the method classifies the hearing aids’ mode of processing according to expectations, with all three conditioning signals.
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