Hearing aid compression that distorts timing can make stop consonants harder to distinguish.
Evidence
However, listeners who are required to use temporal cues to identify elements of speech (perhaps due to significant distortions in their spectral representation of sounds) may be negatively impacted by the temporal distortions imposed by WDRC algorithms. Although limited data exist on the topic, Hedrick and Rice (2000) have demonstrated that temporal distortions imposed by these algorithms can disrupt the perception of temporal cues in speech. They evaluated plosive consonants (e.g., /t/ and /b/), which are characterized by a full stoppage of air prior to the noise burst, a temporal cue that is important for their perception, and a cue that is altered by WDRC. Hedrick and Rice demonstrated that stop consonants were more confusable with one another after being processed by WDRC. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 1726
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Relates to the general finding that listeners with spectral distortion lean more heavily on temporal cues, which then become the very cues compression destroys.
Related
- WDRC processing distorts the temporal cues hearing-impaired listeners rely on for stop consonants (similarity 0.93)
- Wide dynamic range compression degrades perception of speech temporal cues like stop consonants (similarity 0.82)
- Compression hearing aids distort spectral temporal and binaural cues in poorly understood ways (similarity 0.80)
- Independent compression in each ear distorts binaural localization cues (similarity 0.80)
- Nonlinear hearing aid amplification partially restores distorted loudness perception. (similarity 0.79)
- Hearing aid algorithms distort auditory cues yet still improve speech understanding (similarity 0.79)
- Wider stimulus bandwidth improves the ear’s temporal acuity (similarity 0.78)
- Loss of cochlear compression most harms speech recognition of intensity-attenuated syllables (similarity 0.78)
- Loud speech sounds can mask quieter ones within the same utterance for hearing-impaired listeners (similarity 0.78)
- Speech can be resynthesized to selectively remove cochlear compression in hearing listeners (similarity 0.78)