The effect of the speech enhancement algorithm for the sensorineural hearing impairment listener

The introduction of digital hearing aid technology has stirred both public and professional interest in the application of digital signal processing schemes to improve performance and perceived benefit by hearing aid users. Still, noise is one of the major problems to them. This paper describes the results of two experiments in which speech recognition performance was determined for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss, while listeners in speech noise. A speech enhancement algorithm was developed and evaluated to improve speech intelligibility for sensorineural hearing impairment listeners. The results suggest the DSP speech enhancement algorithm may work in synergy with the gain function for the greater SNR improvement as the preprocessing algorithm of digital hearing aids.