Binaural hearing aid processing preserves spatial cues that monaural processing distorts

Evidence

Binaural processing in hearing aids can be advantageous compared to monaural processing. In binaural processing, there is interaction between the left and right hearing aids in order to preserve or enhance the spatial hearing abilities of the user. For example, at high frequencies compression may suppress the sound on the ipsilateral side and leave it untouched on the contralateral side. This biases the ILD cue towards the median plane, which is undesirable. Binaural processing enables, for example, the compression gain to be made equal on both sides and interaural cues to be preserved, which further enhances the spatial hearing performance with hearing aids. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 2754

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in acoustics applications in medicine/assistive technology; relates to interaural level difference concepts. — connects to: Sound source location is encoded in waveform distortions between the ears — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1425