Evaluation of a new approach for speech enhancement algorithms in hearing aids

Several studies on hearing impaired people who use hearing aid reveal that speech enhancement algorithms implemented in hearing aids improve listening comfort. However, these algorithms do not improve speech intelligibility too much and in many cases they decrease the speech intelligibility, both in hearing-impaired and in normally hearing people. In fact, current approaches for development of the speech enhancement algorithms (e.g. minimum mean square error (MMSE)) are not optimal for intelligibility improvement. Some recent studies investigated the effect of different distortions on the enhanced speech and realized that by controlling the amplification distortion, the intelligibility improves dramatically. In this paper, we examined, subjectively and objectively, the effects of amplification distortion on the speech enhanced by two algorithms in three background noises at different SNR levels.