Is Your Hearing Aid Algorithm Really Working?

When developing new hearing aid algorithms, it is difficult to systematically evaluate their performance in realistic every-day life situations. Laboratory setups and computer simulations are usually limited to very controlled and simple acoustic situations. However, software solutions are moving towards more realistic evaluation and simulation tools for hearing devices: The open Master Hearing Aid (openMHA) is a real-time low-latency software for simulation and development of hearing aid algorithms. TASCAR is an acoustic rendering engine specially designed for real-time interaction and dynamic sources for audiological purposes. The novelty of this work is the integration of the two open source tools, leading to a better analysis, understanding and evaluation of hearing aid algorithms in realistic situations. Two different demonstrations will be shown. In the first one, participants will be able to navigate through an audiovisual simulation of a street. The audioviusal scene contains dynamic sources such as vehicles and pedestrians, as well as conversations between four talkers. Participants will be able to select different hearing aid algorithms, which interact in real-time with the scene. Additionally, the SNR benefit of the hearing aid will be shown in real-time according to the head orientation and positioning in the scene. In the second demo, the Portable Hearing Lab (PHL) will be shown, a device for the evaluation of hearing aid algorithms in field experiments. This device runs openMHA on a portable processing hardware featuring behind-the-ear hearing aids. The PHL will also be available for participants to try. The demonstration will provide an outlook of tools and methodologies for testing hearing aids in controlled realistic audiovisual simulations and field experiments.