Music Perception and Hearing Aids

Abstract

The development of hearing aids has been focused on improving speech understanding in quiet and noise, while appropriate processing for music has been a secondary consideration. This may explain some of the user dissatisfaction with hearing aids when listening to music. Music has a greater dynamic range, bandwidth, and range of spectrotemporal properties than speech, which places greater demands on hearing aid circuits and processing algorithms. Although music is an important sound for hearing aid users, little research has investigated how well hearing aids handle music, and even less has investigated how hearing aids should handle music. This chapter provides a review of the limitations, efficacy, and requirements of hearing aids for processing music. It begins with an overview of the spectrotemporal properties of music. This is followed by a discussion of the ability of hearing aid circuits to handle the dynamic range and bandwidth of music without distortion. The perception of rhythm, pitch, melody, and timbre by hearing aid users is briefly reviewed. The literature on appropriate processing for music by a wide range of algorithms commonly found in hearing aids is discussed. The chapter concludes with a summary and future research directions.