Recording and classification of the acoustic environment of hearing aid users

This article investigates the different acoustic signals that hearing aid users are exposed to in their everyday environment. Binaural microphone signals from recording positions close to the microphone locations of behind-the-ear hearing aids were recorded by 20 hearing aid users during daily life. The recorded signals were acoustically analyzed with regard to narrowband short-term level distributions. The subjects also performed subjective assessments of their own recordings in the laboratory using several questions from the Glasgow Hearing Aid Benefit Profile (GHABP) questionnaire. Both the questionnaire and the acoustic analysis data show that the importance, problems, and hearing aid benefit as well as the acoustic characteristics of the individual situations vary a lot across subjects. Therefore, in addition to a nonlinear hearing aid fitting, further signal classification and signal/situation-adaptive features are highly desirable inside modern hearing aids. These should be compatible with the variability of the individual sound environments of hearing-impaired listeners.