Hearing-Loss Compensation Using Deep Neural Networks: A Framework and Results From a Listening Test

This article investigates the use of deep neural networks (DNNs) for hearing-loss compensation. Hearing loss is a prevalent issue affecting millions of people worldwide, and conventional hearing aids have limitations in providing satisfactory compensation. DNNs have shown remarkable performance in various auditory tasks, including speech recognition, speaker identification, and music classification. In this study, we propose a DNN-based approach for hearing-loss compensation, which is trained on the outputs of hearing-impaired and normal-hearing DNN-based auditory models in response to speech signals. First, we introduce a framework for emulating auditory models using DNNs, focusing on an auditory-nerve model in the auditory pathway. We propose a linearization of the DNN-based approach, which we use to analyze the DNN-based hearing-loss compensation. Additionally we develop a simple approach to choose the acoustic center frequencies of the auditory model used for the compensation strategy. Finally, we evaluate, to our knowledge for the first time, the DNN-based hearing-loss compensation strategies using listening tests with hearing impaired listeners. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach results in feasible hearing-loss compensation strategies. Our proposed approach was shown to provide an increase in speech intelligibility versus an unprocessed baseline and was found to outperform a conventional approach in terms of both intelligibility and preference.