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Amplitude Compression for Preventing Rollover at Above-Conversational Speech Levels
Michal Fereczkowski1,2, Raul H Sanchez-Lopez3, Stine Christiansen1,2
1Institute of Clinical Research, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Trends in Hearing
|January 5, 2024
Summary
This study found that slow-acting compression settings in hearing aids significantly improved speech intelligibility and listener preference for individuals experiencing "rollover" at higher sound levels. At lower levels, standard hearing aid settings were preferred.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Speech-Language Pathology
- Hearing Aid Technology
Background:
- Hearing aids use nonlinear amplification to enhance speech perception.
- Speech intelligibility can decrease at higher sound levels, a phenomenon known as "rollover," particularly in individuals with hearing loss.
- Previous research linked rollover in quiet to poorer speech understanding in noise with linear amplification.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effectiveness of different amplitude-compression settings in mitigating speech intelligibility rollover in hearing aid users.
- To compare speech intelligibility and listener preferences between novel "sweet-spot" compression strategies and a standard hearing aid fitting rule.
Main Methods:
- Retesting 16 participants with identified rollover using three amplitude-compression settings: slow-acting sweet-spot, fast-acting sweet-spot, and the National Acoustic Laboratories Non-Linear 1 (NAL-NL1) rule.
- Assessing speech intelligibility in quiet and noise at various sound levels.
- Collecting pairwise preference judgments for the different compression settings.
Main Results:
- Slow-acting sweet-spot compression demonstrated superior speech intelligibility in quiet and noise for sound levels of 70 dB SPL and above compared to the NAL-NL1 setting.
- Participants showed a clear preference for the slow-acting sweet-spot compression at higher sound levels.
- At lower sound levels, all three settings yielded similar intelligibility, with a preference for the NAL-NL1 setting.
Conclusions:
- Slow-acting sweet-spot compression offers significant benefits for hearing aid users with rollover, particularly at sound levels of 70 dB SPL and higher.
- For lower sound levels, established gain targets, such as those from the NAL-NL1 rule, remain more suitable.
- These findings suggest a tailored approach to hearing aid compression settings based on sound level and individual speech perception characteristics.
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