On the reduction of masking effects while preserving competing binaural audio streams

Studies of informational masking indicate that binaural listening provides benefit to speech understanding. This suggests that similar improvements to adaptive processing of binaural acoustic data may be achieved through dichotic presentation rather than the typical diotic presentation. Advanced signal processing for hearing aids often remove competing audio streams while retaining the undistorted audio stream of the target. In this paper, the frequency-domain minimum-variance distortionless-response (FMV) adaptive array processor [M. E. Lockwood, et al., 1999] is modified to provide a dichotic output. In addition to the suppression of the interference, dichotic presentation provides a perceived spatial separation between the target and maskers. Results from human subject testing support an improvement in speech intelligibility for near-optimal spatial separation in the algorithm. A real-time algorithm is currently under development to attempt to achieve a similar perception of spatial separation.