Hearing loss simulator for sound quality applications

Most sound quality studies are conducted using normal hearing subjects, while many people suffer from mild to moderate hearing losses. On the other hand, recruiting subjects with a controlled hearing threshold can be difficult.To tackle this issue, a hearing loss simulator has been developed as part of the France funded AIDA project. This real-time simulator uses the approach proposed by Irino (2013). Using a gamarchirp filters analysis, it aims at replicating the increase of hearing threshold, the widening of auditory filters (depending of the level in the band) as well as the modification of the loudness curve.This simulator has been validated for speech intelligibility measurements. First of all, 76 people aged 55 and more participated to the measurement of speech reception threshold in cars. A sub-group of these participants suffered from hearing losses from 40 to 50 dB and were used as a reference group for the following. The experiment was replicated with 20 young normal-hearing participants - noise and speech being modified by the hearing loss simulator in order to replicate the averaged losses of the reference group.This simulator can be used to evaluate product sound qualities as perceived by hearing impaired customers.