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Convention Paper

Binaural Hearing Aids with Wireless Microphone Systems including Speaker Localization and Spatialization

Authors: Courtois, Gilles; Marmaroli, Patrick; Lissek, Hervé; Oesch, Yves; Balande, William

AES Convention 138 · Paper 9242 · May 2015

Abstract

The digital wireless microphones systems for hearing aids have been developed to provide a clean and intelligible speech signal to hearing-impaired listeners for, e.g., school or teleconference applications. In this technology, the voice of the speaker is picked up by a body-worn microphone, wirelessly transmitted to the hearing aids and rendered in a diotic way (same signal at both ears), preventing any speaker localization clues from being provided. The reported algorithm performs a real-time binaural localization and tracking of the talker so that the clean speech signal can then be spatialized, according to its estimated position relative to the aided listener. This feature is supposed to increase comfort, sense of immersion, and intelligibility for the users of such wireless microphone systems.

Details

Published in
AES Convention 138
AES Convention
138
Paper number
9242
Publication date
May 6, 2015
Session subject
Spatial Audio
Affiliation
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland; Phonak Communciations AG, Murten, Switzerland (See document for exact affiliation information.)
Type
Convention Paper