Enhanced speech perception at low signal-to-noise ratios with multichannel compression hearing aids

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Abstract
The effect of the signal‐to‐noise ratio (S/N) on speechdiscrimination was measured for two types of hearing‐aid amplification, (1) full‐range multichannel compression with eight independent frequency bands and (2) frequency‐equalized linear amplification. Signal‐to‐noise ratios from −5 to 15 dB with speech‐spectrum noise (at 70 dB SPL) and two voices (male and female) were used. The effect of S/N differed for the two aid types: As the S/N decreased, speechdiscrimination became relatively better with the multichannel compression hearing aid (MCCHA) in comparison to the linear amplification hearing aid (LAHA). Furthermore, this shift in MCCHA–LAHA performance occurred for every subject, independent of which aid produced better overall performance. Of 16 hearing‐impaired subjects, 7 showed significantly better overall speechdiscrimination with the MCCHA than with the LAHA, 5 showed no difference, and 4 showed significantly better discrimination with the LAHA. Hearing‐loss severity and MCCHA performance also were related: Subjects with less severe impairments showed greater improvement with the MCCHA. In a normal‐hearing listener, the speechdiscrimination deficit produced by these MCCHAs was small and not statistically significant in most cases. Taken together, these results indicate that a full‐range eight‐channel MCCHA, for a mild to moderately severe hearing loss, causes little information degradation and can be of great benefit for speechdiscrimination in noise, particularly at low S/N.

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