Superior speech clarity and access to speech cues Oticon Intent™ competitive benchmark
RESEARCH BRIEF
2024
Marianna Vatti, Jorge Mauricio Cisneros-Caballero, Valentina Zapata-Rodríguez, Sébastien Santurette Centre for Applied Audiology Research, Oticon A/S
Summary Unlike standard speech-in-noise test setups where noise comes from behind, real-life situations involve noise coming from all directions and often from the same direction as the speech signal. Here, we evaluate Oticon Intent™ against four top competing brands when simulating an intimate conversation in a diffuse listening situation with speech coming from the front or from the side. The results show that Oticon Intent provides superior support to users, with a speech clarity improvement of up to 4 dB compared to other brands, yielding up to 45% more access to speech cues in a realistic very complex sound scene. Oticon Intent is the only hearing aid that provides a speech clarity enhancement from speech coming both from the front and the side across varying levels of environment complexity.
Introduction Conventional hearing aid technology faces limitations in busy environments like restaurants or family dinners, where separating speech from distracting noise is challenging. This is because traditional directionality and noise reduction processing in hearing aids are geared towards enhancing front-facing speech and reducing noise from other directions. However, in complex real-life environments, noise may come not solely from behind but also from other directions including the front. We report on a systematic technical evaluation of Oticon Intent and four other premium brands to compare the provided listening support for speech in a more realistic listening scenario than what is commonly employed.
Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement • An objective measure that estimates the additional contrast between the foreground speech and the background noise produced by the hearing aid. Increased contrast indicates clearer speech. • Calculated with the phase-inversion method1 as the output SNR difference between aided and unaided recordings, the latter serving as the baseline prior to any modification made by the hearing aids. Speech Intelligibility Index (SII)2 • An objective standardized speech intelligibility metric to quantify access to speech cues, using weights based on the importance of each frequency band to speech understanding, thus reflecting human speech perception. • Predicts speech intelligibility by considering factors such as speech signal clarity, background noise presence, and listener hearing ability. Higher SII values indicate improved access to speech cues and greater intelligibility chances.