An Extended Binaural Real-Time Auralization System With an Interface to Research Hearing Aids for Experiments on Subjects With Hearing Loss.
Florian Pausch, Lukas Aspöck, Michael Vorländer and 1 others
PMID 30322347WHAT IT FOUND
This research system can simulate noisy rooms and present them through loudspeakers and research hearing aids.
Measurements show spatial cues can be distorted, so it is a lab tool, not evidence that hearing aid fitting in virtual rooms helps patients.
Key findings
01Hearing aid microphone transfer functions differed from ear-canal transfer functions in level and timing cues.
02With room reflections included, loudspeaker crosstalk cancellation channel separation was lower and could be negative at very low frequencies.
03Measured static end-to-end latency was 25.9 ms for the loudspeaker path and 30.9 ms for the research hearing aid path.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The supplied text reports no clinical participant group, so it cannot show that this system helps hearing aid fitting or auditory training. Measurements used an artificial head, not real people with hearing loss. The paper did not measure dynamic end-to-end latency with head movement; it only estimated it. Room reflections reduced loudspeaker channel separation, especially at low frequencies. Hearing aid microphone transfer functions differed from ear-canal transfer functions, so spatial perception through the system may not match natural ear-canal hearing aid use. Full real-time reverberation simulation exceeded the processing capacity of standard desktop computers.
Declared interests
Funding was named as RWTH Aachen University and FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions. The supplied text does not state author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that virtual-room hearing aid fitting improves patient outcomes. The supplied text does not report clinical outcomes in hearing-aid users, and the paper reports system measurements and limitations, not clinical results.