Noise reduction schemes for digital hearing aids and their use for the hearing impaired

The aim of this thesis is to improve both the assessment methods and the available algorithms for noise reduction in hearing aids. A speech pause detection algorithm is proposed which maintains a low false-alarm rate over a wide range of signal-to-noise ratios. This facilitates its application for noise estimation in noise reduction algorithms. Comprehensive evaluations of the Ephraim-Malah noise reduction algorithms with hearing-impaired subjects show that besides better 'sound quality', most obvious benefits are reductions in the mental effort needed to listen to speech in noise. To assess this feature, a listening effort test is developed. For further subjective quality assessment of the algorithms, the method of paired comparisons in combination with the Bradley-Terry scaling model is suggested and applied. The predictive power of several 'objective' speech quality measures is investigated. Particularly the PMF and LAR objective quality measures reflect different subjective results.

Level thesis:degree_level

thesis.doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher

Universität Oldenburg

Year

2000

Author dc:creator

• Marzinzik, Mark

• [Keine Schlagwörter von Autor/in vergeben.]

Repository record source_url

http://oops.uni-oldenburg.de/331

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:oops.uni-oldenburg.de:331