A subjective evaluation of music beat recognition with different timbres by hearing-impaired people

Abstract

For hearing-impaired people (HIs) to enjoy music more, one of the authors, who is profoundly deaf but enthusiastic about music, feels the choice of instrumental sounds is important. We conducted an experiment of beat tapping with 20 musical instruments involving one group of HIs using hearing aids and another group of HIs using cochlear implants. From the analysis of a subjective evaluation about each instrumental sound, we found the two groups differed in their perceptions of sounds. One reason for this difference seems to be the envelope of the sounds. Thus, we are going to analyze sounds to pursue suitable instrumental sounds for HIs.