The Effects of “Noise Suppression” Hearing Aids on Consonant Recognition in Speech-Babble and Low-Frequency Noise

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Abstract
We evaluated the performance of experienced hearing-aid users wearing seven different commercially available "noise-suppression" hearing aids. Two hearing aids, the Audiotone A-54 and the Telex 363C, used amplitude compression. The others, two versions of a Maico hearing aid SP147, a Richards ASE-B, a versions of a Maico hearing aid SP147, a Richards ASE-B, a Rion HB-69AS, and a Seimens 283ASP, are designed to attentuate specific frequency regions in the presence of noise. Sixteen subjects listened to 13 consonants in the form /i/-consonant-/i/ with six replications per consonant (78 items). Performance was measured with the compression or noise-suppression circuit on and off in the presence of speech-babble nose and in continuous low-frequency noise. Measurements were also obtained with the suppression circuit "off" but without any background noise. The results suggested that only a few subjects benefitted from the noise-suppression curicuits, and in several cases performance in noise was poorer with the noise suppression circuit than without it. An information-transfer analysis of the errors indicated that enhanced or decreased performance was generally a result of changes across all phonetic features, not specific ones.

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