Applications of Digital Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics

Abstract

This chapter deals with signal processing for hearing aids. The primary goal of a hearing aid is to improve the understanding of speech by an individual with a hearing impairment, although the perception of music and environmental sounds is also a concern. The basic signal-processing system consists of linear filtering followed by amplification, with more sophisticated techniques used to try to compensate for the nature of the hearing impairment and to improve speech intelligibility in noise.20