ICRA Noises: Artificial Noise Signals with Speech-like Spectral and Temporal Properties for Hearing Instrument Assessment: Ruidos ICRA: Señates de ruido artificial con espectro similar al habla y propiedades temporales para pruebas de instrumentos auditivos

TLDR: It is demonstrated that the ICRA noises show the effectiveness of the noise reduction schemes, and some initial steps are proposed to develop a standard method of technical specification of noise reduction based on the modulation characteristics.

Abstract: Current standards involving technical specification of hearing aids provide limited possibilities for assessing the influence of the spectral and temporal characteristics of the input signal, and these characteristics have a significant effect on the output signal of many recent types of hearing aids. This is particularly true of digital hearing instruments, which typically include non-linear amplification in multiple channels. Furthermore, these instruments often incorporate additional non-linear functions such as “noise reduction” and “feedback cancellation”. The output signal produced by a non-linear hearing instrument relates to the characteristics of the input signal in a complex manner. Therefore, the choice of input signal significantly influences the outcome of any acoustic or psychophysical assessment of a non-linear hearing instrument. For this reason, the International Collegium for Rehabilitative Audiology (ICRA) has introduced a collection of noise signals that can be used for hearing aid tes...