Dipl.-Ing. Horst Warncke, Hamburg
Video 8
“‘Speech in speech in noise‘ – Or: The end of directional microphone technology as we know it”
Normal hearing people are able to focus on individual acoustic events amidst a complex mixture of various sounds. Selective listening makes it possible for us to understand language even if it is significantly quieter than the ambient noise. This ability, however, is usually lost in people with impaired hearing, which is why those affected experience great difficulty hearing in noise or in speech. Directional microphones are meant to be helpful by improving the signal-to-noise ratio. At the same time, however, they produce an acoustic tunnel vision.
In this talk, I shall present a new technology that offers a completely new approach to easier intelligibility of speech in speech in noise. Users are no longer subject to the decisions of an automatic, they may listen selectively again. This means they are free to decide what they want to hear from any direction, regardless of the voice or whatever sound.
Scientific studies have demonstrated the following direct benefits:
– Listening effort is significantly reduced.
– Memory for words is increased.
– Speech intelligibility in speech noise is significantly increased.