Binaural audio in multimedia systems to improve auditory perception for the hearing impaired

Persons with sensorineural hearing impairments experience difficulty in using the audio part of multimedia information. Degraded frequency selectivity of the ear, due to increase in spectral masking along the cochlear partition, results in degraded speech perception. Splitting the speech signal by filtering it with a filter bank and adding signals from alternate bands for presenting to the two ears is likely to reduce the effect of spectral masking and thus help in improving speech intelligibility. The dichotically presented signals are perceptually combined in the higher levels of auditory processes. We have carried out experimental evaluation of this scheme, using critical band filters, in off-line and real-time processing of speech signals. The scheme resulted in improving speech quality, response time, recognition scores, and transmission of consonantal features, particularly the place, indicating usefulness of the scheme for better reception of spectral characteristics. The signal processing for improving the auditory perception by persons with moderate sensorineural hearing loss may be integrated as a part of the multimedia system