Binary Masking & Speech Intelligibility

Jesper Boldt

Research output: PhD thesis

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Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how binary masking can be used to increase intelligibility in situations where hearing impaired listeners have difficulties understanding what is being said. The major part of the experiments carried out in this thesis can be categorized as either experiments under ideal conditions or as experiments under more realistic conditions useful for real-life applications such as hearing aids. In the experiments under ideal conditions, the previously defined ideal binary mask is evaluated using hearing impaired listeners, and a novel binary mask -- the target binary mask -- is introduced. The target binary mask shows the same substantial increase in intelligibility as the ideal binary mask and is proposed as a new reference for binary masking. In the category of real-life applications, two new methods are proposed: a method for estimation of the ideal binary mask using a directional system and a method for correcting errors in the target binary mask. The last part of the thesis, proposes a new method for objective evaluation of speech intelligibility.
Original languageEnglish
Publisher
Print ISBNs978-87-92328-50-2
Publication statusPublished - 19 Aug 2010

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