R-HINT-E: a realistic hearing in noise test environment

With the advent of cheap, low-power digital signal processors, it has been possible to develop hearing aids that utilize DSP technology. It is essential that the algorithms instantiated on these hearing aids be evaluated in a standard fashion with regards to both engineering and perceptual criteria. However, currently available hearing in noise tests do not allow for the range of signals or environments that are of interest to the designer of hearing aid algorithms. In addition, virtual audio environments have recently been suggested (Shinn-Cunningham, B.G., 20th Int. Conf. of the IEEE Engineering in Biology and Medicine Society, 1998) as a potential tool for the auditory science community. To address the needs of both engineering and clinical evaluation, we propose a flexible, software based virtual acoustic environment capable of realistically simulating a wide variety of scenarios.