Increasing Hearing Ability – Using Frequency Shifting and Channel Control Yuan Alex Gao CMPT

Presentation Outline Background information about hearing loss Accessibility issues Background Noise Recognition and Reduction Frequency shifting - High Frequency Hearing Loss Unidirectional Hearing - Single-side Hearing Loss Implementation for the project Demonstration

Hearing Loss Background Information- According to WHO (World Hearth Organization), there are 360 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, but production of hearing aids only meets less than 10%. Major Cause for Hearing Loss Aging - People will loss high frequency hearing ability with aging. Exposure to noise Ear infection - Noise and infection could cause single-side hearing loss

Background Noise Recognition and Reduction Background noise generally effect all conversation regardless hear ability Recognition - Ming(2011) introduced a new approach called longest matching segment (LMS). In the recognition,clean speech sentences taken from a corpus than compare noisy sentence with the corpus sentences. Reduction - Signal to noise ration - Kricos (2014) explained FM technology is helpful because the talker’s voice can be increased to the level that higher than other noises, as much as 20 dB higher.

Frequency Shifting Lowering Frequency Switching will increase hearing ability for people who have high frequency hearing loss. Sources: – Braida (1979) and her colleagues reviewed studies from 1950 to 1970 and conclude lowering is only suitable for intensive, long-term and properly designed training program. – Jason (2012) introduced Linear Frequency Transposition and Nonlinear Frequency Compression have shown significant benefits in terms of speech recognition and detection. Linear Frequency Transposition: Linear Frequency Transposition shifts high- frequency sounds to lower frequencies. Nonlinear Frequency Compression: Nonlinear frequency compression that is designed to compress and high frequency information into an adjacent area of audible hearing.

LFTNLFC

Unidirectional Hearing – Single-Side hearing loss Convert Stereo sound to mono sound could help people with single-side hearing loss. Sources: – Neil (2005) currently most assistive devices such as radios, TVs, iPods, etc. are all stereo devices but some of them can convert stereo to mono directly to increase accessibility due to their hardware capability

Extra Gadgets Mono Adapter Special designed headphone Home Theater

Implementation for the project The main activities for this project is research for three topics: Frequency shifting. Channel Controls. Noise Reduction. For each topic there are three areas I was looking for it. Journal Paper: All the paper I find which related with my topic will be use on my project to support my idea and solution. Video: Video will be used on the ADE to introduce topic. Software: Software will be used on the ADE to simulate different type of hearing losses symptoms.

Problems Frequency Shifting Section – Journal Paper My original research plan was to find the solution for both low frequency hearing loss and high frequency hearing loss, but due to the very limit information on low frequency hearing loss. I have to cut this part off. Background Noise and Channel Control Reduction – Video There are not so many good videos dealing with background noise and stereo to mono. Because of this I have to find some videos which close to my topic and put it on ADE.

Demonstration - Outline 1. Test your ear age 2. Stereo vs Mono 3. Experience high hearing loss by using NIOSH hearing Simulation 4. Use Signal to noise ratio to increase speech clarity.

Demonstration What’s your ear age? 8Hz71 10KHz62 12KHz55 14KHz43 16KHz35 18KHz21 20KHz12

Stereo vs Mono Game Time. Listen to this Stereo Mono Stereo - CenterStereo – Left OnlyStereo – Right Only Mono - Center Mono – Left Only Mono – Right Only

Demo This part will use NISOH to demonstrate hearing loss.

Conclusion This project especially the ADE defiantly can be used for the future CMPT 480 class. The software in the ADE can be used to demonstrate different kind of hearing loss, and also allow user to experience the specialty of Mono sound which is extremely important for design sound contents. Future work – Videos (If the ADE could provide more clear and direct video for the project, this could help user to understand the content more better.)

End