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| Speech In Noise Management |
Hearing aids are able to identify characteristics of speech that are different than characteristics of noise.
However, many characteristics of noise may be in the speech range and not totally separate from speech.
Noise management is not noise cancellation. Noise management programs are subtle. They may help
some. However, these programs do not eliminate or reduce substantially background noise. It is not
unusual to run across false claims (advertisements) about reduction of background noise. Directional
hearing aids are actually more effective at reducing background noise to the rear than a noise
management programs.
2. Noise management.
Noise management has become more sophisticated and works off of several parameters. With full
capacity of multi memory and directionality, this is how it works.
*Directionality picks up toward the person you are facing and dampens sound to the rear.
*A rapidly changing speech signal is attended to while non speech characteristics of a constant noise is
dampened.
*Low frequencies are reduced to decrease the masking affects that low frequency sounds(vowels) have
on consonantal high frequency sounds (sh, p, t, s, f, th, etc).
*soft high frequency sounds(sh, p, t, s, f, th, etc) that are difficult to hear are increased.
*loud high frequency sounds that are obnoxious are dampened and smoothed to create less harshness.
* peaks and valleys in noise may be smoothed.
* Transitions from noisy and loud to soft and quiet is more seamlessly changed so that changes are not
real obvious or obnoxious.
However, many characteristics of noise may be in the speech range and not totally separate from speech.
Noise management is not noise cancellation. Noise management programs are subtle. They may help
some. However, these programs do not eliminate or reduce substantially background noise. It is not
unusual to run across false claims (advertisements) about reduction of background noise. Directional
hearing aids are actually more effective at reducing background noise to the rear than a noise
management programs.
2. Noise management.
Noise management has become more sophisticated and works off of several parameters. With full
capacity of multi memory and directionality, this is how it works.
*Directionality picks up toward the person you are facing and dampens sound to the rear.
*A rapidly changing speech signal is attended to while non speech characteristics of a constant noise is
dampened.
*Low frequencies are reduced to decrease the masking affects that low frequency sounds(vowels) have
on consonantal high frequency sounds (sh, p, t, s, f, th, etc).
*soft high frequency sounds(sh, p, t, s, f, th, etc) that are difficult to hear are increased.
*loud high frequency sounds that are obnoxious are dampened and smoothed to create less harshness.
* peaks and valleys in noise may be smoothed.
* Transitions from noisy and loud to soft and quiet is more seamlessly changed so that changes are not
real obvious or obnoxious.