Objective estimation of hearing compensation by means of auditory spectral representations

Abstract

An objective method, based on estimation of the Auditory Spectral Representations (ASRs), is presented to give a reliable prediction of which compensation strategy should behave better for a given hearing loss. The ‘distance’ between the ASR of a normal and an impaired listener is evaluated for three hearing loss profiles (mild, moderate, and severe) and two compensation strategies (NAL-R and FIG6). Simulations showed that, for a given hearing loss profile, the two strategies produced different results: for mild to moderate hearing losses FIG6 generated ASRs much more similar to those of a normal subject than NAL-R. The opposite was found for severe hearing loss, as the FIG6 generated more distortions than NAL-R.