Current projects
Hearing aid Amplification at Soft Input Levels
Soft sounds often provide information about what is happening in our surroundings. Examples of soft sounds include telephone ringing in the distance or footsteps outside the door. By definition, some soft sounds are not audible to people with hearing loss and the lack of audibility depends on the degree and type of hearing loss. Until recently, hearing aid research has concentrated on amplification for medium level sounds and in particular speech, while there has been less research on how much amplification for soft sounds is appropriate. The few studies on this topic have often provided conflicting results, depending on the type of hearing aid and methodology used. This project will investigate the perception of soft sounds for hearing aid wearers and how this perception is influenced by the listening situation and the hearing aid parameters.
Gain for Conductive Losses – How do different hearing aid manufacturers compensate for conductive losses in their prescribed gain?
Aims
For this study the aims were twofold:
- to study the gain compensation for conductive losses in hearing aids from ten different hearing aid manufactures and
- to investigate how the manufacturers’ implemented NAL-NL1 gain compared to NAL-NL1’s own compensation for conductive losses.
Method
The hearing aids were chosen in order to represent a variety of high-end devices from ten different hearing aid companies. The devices were programmed with four different audiograms representing a flat and a sloping hearing loss of both sensorineural and conductive origin. 711-coupler measurements of hearing aid gain and OSPL90 were performed in an acoustic test chamber. The signals used were the ISTS speech signal in ICRA1 background noise for the gain measurements and pure tones for the OSPL90 measurements. The data were compared to NAL-NL1 prescribed gain for the four audiograms.
Main findings
The results are currently being analyzed.
Hearing aid noise reduction – Measured short-term average gain reduction
Aims
As a follow-up to the project where various noise reduction algorithms were evaluated using long-term measurements, the current project aims at describing how the noise reduction algorithms work in the short time frame.
Participants for future research
For the research that is carried out at the group’s own research laboratory, participants are currently being recruited to a data-base. If you live in the Stockholm area and you have a hearing loss, you are welcome to contact us if you are interested in participating in future research.
E-mail: orca@orca-eu.info
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