Research Areas - Hearing Aid Innovations

Determination of Optimal Characteristics

This project investigates how the preferred amplification characteristic varies from a base response (NAL-RP) with the acoustic input, listening criterion and hearing loss configuration.

The Acoustically Transparent Hearing Aid

The problems of own-voice quality and feedback oscillation (which results when occlusion is avoided in the traditional manner) are the biggest reported problems with hearing aids. The occlusion reduction invention would lead to major commercial and public good outcomes.

Noise Sensitive Adaptive Amplification

Background noise influences the type of amplification preferred by hearing-aid users in terms of both speech intelligibility and comfort. The Noise Sensitive Adaptive Amplification Project addresses this issue through the development of a theoretically based hearing-aid prescription and algorithm. The hearing-aid prescription is aimed at maximising speech intelligibility and comfort while minimising the intrusiveness of background noise. The project compares this prescription with the NAL-NL1 prescription and also compares several methods of adaptively altering this amplification with changes in the acoustical signal.

Polymer Sandwich Microphone

The project aim is to bring to manufacture a final microphone design and to implement the licensing royalty arrangement with the industrial partner.

Minimising Acoustic Shock in Speech Communication Systems

Listeners to communications equipment such as telephones and two-way radios find they are sometimes subjected to sounds with a loudness that exceeds the loudness of speech to which they are acclimatised. The effect of these louder sounds range from a minor annoyance to an acoustic shock injury that sometimes results in permanent hearing damage. These problems are being addressed by a novel approach that allows the speech to be preserved but protects the listener by controlling the loudness of all other sounds relative to the loudness of recent speech.

 

  Date Created: Thursday February 19 2004
  Last Updated:  Tuesday July 29 2008
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