Fraunhofer IDMT, Project Group Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology, Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all", Oldenburg, Germany.
Medizinische Physik, Cluster of Excellence Hearing4all, Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg, Germany.
Int J Audiol. 2022 Nov;61(11):965-974. doi: 10.1080/14992027.2021.1980233. Epub 2021 Oct 6.
This study investigated if individual preferences with respect to the trade-off between a good signal-to-noise ratio and a distortion-free speech target were stable across different masking conditions and if simple adjustment methods could be used to identify subjects as either "noise haters" or "distortions haters".
In each masking condition, subjects could adjust the target speech level according to their preferences by employing (i) linear gain or gain at the cost of (ii) clipping distortions or (iii) compression distortions. The comparison of these processing conditions allowed investigating the preferred trade-off between distortions and noise disturbance.
Thirty subjects differing widely in hearing status (normal-hearing to moderately impaired) and age (23-85 years).
High test-retest stability of individual preferences was found for all modification schemes. The preference adjustments suggested that subjects could be consistently categorised along a scale from "noise haters" to "distortion haters", and this preference trait remained stable through all maskers, spatial conditions, and types of distortions.
Employing quick self-adjustment to collect listening preferences in complex listening conditions revealed a stable preference trait along the "noise distortions" tolerance dimension. This could potentially help in fitting modern hearing aid algorithms to the individual user.
本研究旨在探讨个体在良好信噪比与无失真语音目标之间权衡的偏好是否在不同掩蔽条件下稳定，以及是否可以采用简单的调整方法将受试者分为“噪声厌恶者”或“失真厌恶者”。
在每种掩蔽条件下，受试者可以根据自己的偏好通过以下方式调整目标语音电平：（i）线性增益或（ii）削波失真或（iii）压缩失真。对这些处理条件的比较可以研究失真和噪声干扰之间的最优权衡。
30 名受试者，听力状况（正常至中度受损）和年龄（23-85 岁）差异很大。
所有修正方案都表现出个体偏好的高度测试-重测稳定性。偏好调整表明，受试者可以根据“噪声厌恶者”到“失真厌恶者”的尺度进行一致分类，并且这种偏好特征在所有掩蔽器、空间条件和失真类型下都保持稳定。
在复杂的聆听条件下，采用快速的自我调整来收集聆听偏好，揭示了沿着“噪声-失真”容忍度维度的稳定偏好特征。这可能有助于将现代助听器算法适配到个体用户。
