ISCA Archive Interspeech 2012
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2012

Real-time implementation of multi-band frequency compression for listeners with moderate sensorineural impairment

Nitya Tiwari, Prem C. Pandey, Pandurangarao N. Kulkarni

Widening of auditory filters in persons with sensorineural hearing impairment leads to increased spectral masking and degraded speech perception. Multi-band frequency compression of the complex spectral samples using pitch-synchronous processing has been reported to increase speech perception by persons with moderate sensorineural loss. It is shown that implementation of multi-band frequency compression using fixed-frame processing along with least-squares error based signal estimation reduces the processing delay and the speech output is indistinguishable from pitch-synchronous processing. For real-time operation, the processing is implemented using a fraction of the computing capacity of the 16-bit fixed point processor TMS320C5515.