1. Sound Conversion for Hearing Loss Patients
using Texas Instruments DSP chips
Advisor: Dr. Thomas Yen
Jack Ho – BSAC
Kuya Takami – BWIG
Nathan Werbeckes – Leader
Joseph Yuen – Communicator

2. Hearing Loss Conductive Sensorineural In middle or outer ear
Wax, infection, foreign objects
Dampens all sounds
Sensorineural
Lose high frequency sounds
Amplification no help

3. Sensorineural Causes Birth defect Disease Medications Loud noises
Brain tumors
Head trauma
Aging

4. Sensorineural Prevalence
10% of US pop.
(31.5 Million)
~3 / 1,000 birth defects
65% below age 65

5. Examples
What they hear
What we hear

6. Problem Statement High frequency hearing loss
Normal human hearing range
10-20,000 Hz
Speaking range
Up to 10 kHz
Talk about causes too
Examples of Sh, S, T, Th, P, or F sounds
Picture reference: Krames Communications. (1995). Hearing Aids. [Brochure]. San Bruno, CA.

7. Problem Statement Ctnd.
Texas Instruments
C5509 DSP
Shift/compress frequencies
Using DSP to process signals in real time
Frequency scan
Aesthetics
Fashionable
Bluetooth Hands-free Device Look-alike
Speak on C5509’s features: Low-power, ADC, etc.
Also on TI’s grant and supplying us with their technology

8. Block Diagram Electrot Condenser Microphone
TI Fixed Point DSP (TMS320VC5509)
Digital to Analog Converter
Preamp and speaker

9. Audio Signal Processing Method
Audio timescale-pitch modification
Resampling
Phase Vocoder
Pitch Scaling (Transpose)
What we hear
What our device will sound like
What they would normally hear 9

10. Audio Signal Processing Method
Resampling 10

11. Audio Signal Processing Method
Pitch Scaling (Transpose) 11

12. Future Work (This semester)
Build Platform
Learn development kit
Write code
Test

13. Future Work (later semesters)
Convert all speech sounds to hearing fovea
Different modes for different environments
Small enough to resemble blue tooth headset
Good at sound localization
Psychoacoustics

14. References http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/

15. Questions?