Audio Quality Perception of Hearing-Impaired Listeners in Complex Acoustic Environments

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Acoustics
• Psychoacoustics

Background:

• Complex acoustic environments (CAEs) pose challenges for hearing-impaired (HI) listeners' speech reception.
• Limited research exists on HI listeners' audio quality perception in CAEs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess distortion detection thresholds and audio quality ratings in HI listeners with very mild and moderate hearing loss (HL).
• To investigate the influence of CAE complexity on audio perception.

Main Methods:

• Listeners with very mild and moderate HL rated speech and pink noise distorted with nonlinear saturation, spectral ripples, level differences, and spatial offsets.
• Stimuli were presented in CAEs with varying reverberation, room size, and interfering sound sources.
• Correlations between pure tone average (PTA) and distortion detection thresholds were analyzed.

Main Results:

• Listeners with moderate HL showed higher distortion detection thresholds than those with very mild HL, particularly with interfering sounds.
• Moderate HL listeners rated audio quality lower in masked conditions, indicating difficulty separating target from maskers.
• PTA correlated significantly with distortion detection thresholds in noisy conditions, suggesting PTA as a predictor.

Conclusions:

• Hearing loss severity significantly affects audio quality perception and distortion detection in complex acoustic environments.
• Interfering sounds pose a greater challenge for listeners with moderate HL.
• Pure tone average is a potential predictor for hearing-impaired listeners' distortion detection thresholds in CAEs.