ISCA Archive Interspeech 2015
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2015

Intelligibility enhancement of vocal announcements for public address systems: a design for all through a presbycusis pre-compensation filter

A. Ben Jemaa, N. Mechergui, G. Courtois, A. Mudry, S. Djaziri-Larbi, M. Turki, H. Lissek, M. Jaidane

Listeners suffering from presbycusis (age-related hearing loss) often report difficulties when attempting to understand vocal announcements in public spaces. Current solutions that improve speech intelligibility for hearing-impaired subjects mainly consist of customized solutions, such as hearing aids. This study proposes a more generic strategy, which would enhance speech perception for both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners, i.e. For All. It provides the early stages of such an approach. Digital filters with different degrees of hearing-loss compensation have been designed, getting inspired by the way hearing aids process speech signals. Subjective tests conducted on normal-hearing and presbycusis subjects confirmed that it is possible to improve speech intelligibility for both types of population simultaneously.