A Method to Remove Differences in Frequency Response Between Commercial Hearing Aids to Allow Direct Comparison of the Sound Quality of Hearing-Aid Features

Abstract

Goal: We want to remove differences in frequency response between different commercial hearing aids so that we can compare the sound quality of signal processing features from different hearing-aid in a future paired-comparison set-up. More specifically, we want to control for the confounding effects of the linear hearing aid response when evaluating nonlinear processing. This article presents a control procedure and evaluates its effectiveness. Method: We increased the similarity of hearing-aid recordings in three steps and used both an objective quality metric and listening tests to investigate if the recordings from different hearing aids were perceptually similar. Results: Neither was it sufficient to manually adjust the hearing-aid insertion gain, nor was it sufficient to add an additional bandwidth limitation to the recordings. Only after the application of an inverse filter the perceptual differences between recordings were removed adequately. Conclusion: It was possible to level the ground between different hearing devices, so to speak. This will allow future research to evaluate the sound quality of nonlinear signal processing features.