Improving speech audibility with wide dynamic range compression in listeners with severe sensorineural loss

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech-Language Pathology
• Hearing Science

Background:

• Linear amplification fitting is well-established for various hearing losses.
• Limited understanding exists regarding wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) effects for severe hearing loss.
• WDRC aims to improve audibility across a wide range of sound intensities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if increased audibility from WDRC amplification enhances speech recognition comparably in listeners with different degrees of hearing loss.
• To compare the effectiveness of WDRC versus linear amplification for speech recognition.

Main Methods:

• Tested listeners with mild-to-moderate and severe sensorineural hearing loss.
• Used vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) syllables and sentences processed with linear and WDRC amplification.
• Controlled audibility to ensure WDRC provided greater audibility than linear amplification, with equated audibility levels for comparison.

Main Results:

• Both listener groups showed similar benefits in VCV (consonant) recognition with WDRC-amplified audibility.
• Listeners with mild-to-moderate hearing loss demonstrated greater benefit from WDRC in sentence recognition compared to those with severe hearing loss.

Conclusions:

• Enhanced audibility via WDRC similarly impacts consonant recognition regardless of hearing loss severity.
• Discrepancies in sentence recognition may stem from processing differences or acoustic information availability in longer speech segments.