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ASFHEAR: Adaptive Sound Field synthesis for HEaring Aid Research

Introduction

In the world, over 1.5 billion people suffer from hearing loss and over 434 million require care. This number is expected to increase, and hearing loss has a significant social and economic impact.1 Hearing-impaired people struggle to communicate in everyday situations, especially in noisy or reverberant environments. 2 Hearing Aid Research is demanding high performance diagnosis tools to develop the new generation of hearing devices3 and help hearing-impaired people to participate fully in society. One such desirable tool is a Sound Field Synthesis (SFS) system that could perfectly reproduce a target sound pressure field over space and time, using a loudspeaker array (see Figure). Such system should allow for the faithful and controlled reproduction of sound field in laboratory conditions to study situations where hearing impairment is still problematic, such as low speech intelligibility performances in reverberant rooms.

Cocktail party \label{mylabel}
An ideal SFS system should recreate exactly a real-life situation to allow studying situations where hearing impairment is problematic.

Objectives

In this context, the ASFHEAR project aims to develop a real-time adaptive Sound Field Synthesis system for speech intelligibility studies in virtual reverberant room.

To do so three objectives are targeted:

  • To develop and Adaptive SFS system where the physical accuracy between the target and reproduced sound field is maximized,
  • To implement such a system and make it work in real-time,
  • To use this system for speech intelligibility studies in virtual reverberant rooms.

The Different Tasks

The ASFHEAR project is articulated around 3 main tasks:

  • WP1 : Adaptive Sound Field Synthesis algorithm
  • WP2 : Real-time implementation Adaptive Sound Field Synthesis
  • WP3 : Comparative studies for Speech Intelligibility in virtual rooms

The Partners

The ASFHEAR project is funded by the french national research agency ANR.

Partners \label{mylabel}

The project is carried out inside the Acoustic team of LMFA, at École Centrale de Lyon, Écully, France. in collaboration with researchers from LTDS, ENPTE and Citi-LAB, INRIA, Insa-Lyon.

The Team

  • Pierre Lecomte, associate professor, LMFA, ECL : Project Coordinator
  • Marie-Annick Galland, professor, LMFA, ECL,
  • Mathieu Lavandier, researcher HDR, LTDS, ENTPE,
  • Romain Michon, researcher, CITI LAB, INRIA, INSA Lyon,
  • Antonio Pereira, researcher, LMFA, Centrale Innovation
  • PhD student: to be hired, see Jobs
  • Postdoc #1: to be hired, see Jobs
  • Postdoc #2: to be hired, see Jobs
  • Intern #1: to be hired, see Jobs
  • Intern #2: to be hired, see Jobs
  • Intern #3: to be hired, see Jobs

  1. World Report on Hearing, World Health Organization, 2021. ↩

  2. S. Hougaard, S. Ruf, Eurotrak i: A consumer survey about hearing aids in germany, france, and the uk, Hearing Review 18 (2) (2011) 12–28. ↩

  3. B. Edwards, The future of hearing aid technology, Trends in Amplification 11 (1) (2007) 31–45. ↩