Investigation of sound localization performance in a virtual acoustic environment designed for hearing aid users

Sound localization performance in binaural reproduction systems using acoustic crosstalk cancellation filters and loudspeakers relies on head-related transfer functions and has been previously examined in several studies on normal-hearing listeners. For applications on listeners fitted with bilateral hearing aids, the binaural playback setup has to be extended to include a pair of research hearing aids in the playback of simulated binaural signals based on hearing aid-related transfer functions. The fusion of these two playback paths enables to include the remaining hearing capabilities of a listener with hearing loss and to simulate sound perception over hearing aids. In this study, sound localization performance in a system designed for hearing aid users is evaluated with normalhearing adults.