An individualized super Gaussian single microphone Speech Enhancement for hearing aid users with smartphone as an assistive device

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel super Gaussian speech enhancement method implemented on smartphones, allowing hearing aid users to customize noise suppression and improve speech clarity in noisy environments.

Contribution

A new super Gaussian joint maximum a posteriori based gain function for single microphone speech enhancement, with real-time user customization on smartphones for hearing aid support.

Findings

Effective noise suppression and speech clarity improvements

Subjective and objective measures confirm performance gains

Real-world testing shows practical usability

Abstract

In this letter, we derive a new super Gaussian Joint Maximum a Posteriori based single microphone speech enhancement gain function. The developed Speech Enhancement method is implemented on a smartphone, and this arrangement functions as an assistive device to hearing aids. We introduce a tradeoff parameter in the derived gain function that allows the smartphone user to customize their listening preference, by controlling the amount of noise suppression and speech distortion in real-time based on their level of hearing comfort perceived in noisy real world acoustic environment. Objective quality and intelligibility measures show the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison to benchmark techniques considered in this paper. Subjective results reflect the usefulness of the developed Speech Enhancement application in real-world noisy conditions at signal to noise ratio levels of 0 dB and 5 dB.