A real-time hearing impairment simulator based on BELA
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Hearing impairment is a dominant and increasing worldwide challenge, affecting up to 10% of the global population. Hearing impairment leads to deficits in communication in noisy environments, and thereby to social isolation, disadvantages on the labour market and also cognitive decline.Besides the efforts to compensate for hearing impairment through hearing assistive devices, awareness of the challenges faced by hearing impaired listeners are important.In this project we report the development of a real-time hearing impairment simulator based on the low-cost audio signal processing platform BELA. The simulator contains a perceptually motivated analysis filter bank, followed by signal processing algorithms mimicking various degrees of hearing loss, loss of compression and reduction of frequency resolution. The implemented algorithms were optimized with a trade-off of perfect reconstruction of the signal by the analysis-synthesis stages and the perceptual outcome. The developed hardware additions and the software will be available under an open source license.Miniaturization of this platform will make it possible to show-case the challenges connected to hearing impairment and thereby raise public awareness and thereby improve the living conditions of hearing impaired listeners.