Title :
Evaluation of two speech and noise estimation methods for the assessment of nonlinear hearing aids
Author :
Ellaham, Nicolas ; Giguère, Christian ; Gueaieb, Wail
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Inf. Technol. & Eng., Univ. of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Abstract :
In this paper, we present a comparative evaluation of two speech and noise estimation methods commonly used with nonlinear hearing devices: the coherence function used for spectral estimation, and a noise phase-inversion scheme used to perform signal separation. The speech and noise spectra estimated at the output with both methods are compared for normal-hearing subjects and for hearing-impaired subjects using linear and nonlinear hearing aid processing. The spectra are found to be similar except for very low SNR conditions. However, Speech Intelligibility Index (ANSI S3.5-1997 [1]) estimates are relatively unaffected by differences in the spectra obtained with each method.
Keywords :
hearing aids; signal denoising; source separation; spectral analysis; speech intelligibility; speech processing; SNR; coherence function; hearing-impaired subject; linear hearing aid processing; noise estimation method; noise phase-inversion scheme; noise spectra; nonlinear hearing aid assessment; signal separation; spectral estimation; speech estimation method; speech intelligibility index; speech spectra; Auditory system; Coherence; Hearing aids; Noise reduction; Signal to noise ratio; Speech; Hearing aids; adaptive systems; nonlinear distortion; spectral analysis; speech processing;
Conference_Titel :
Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2011 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Prague
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-0538-0
Electronic_ISBN :
1520-6149
DOI :
10.1109/ICASSP.2011.5946398
