Discrimination of filtered-clipped speech by hearing-impaired subjects.

A form of preprocessed speech known to be highly intelligible to normal listeners was heard by a group of hearing‐impaired subjects. The preprocessing technique involves high‐pass filtering (cutoff 1100 Hz, slope 12 dB/oct) and infinite amplitude clipping. The subjects heard both unmodified and filtered/clipped word lists at 40‐, 30‐, and 20‐dB sensation levels. Discrimination scores for 13 out of 17 cases were significantly higher at 20‐ and 30‐dB sensation levels for filtered/clipped speech than for unmodified speech.