Combination of monaural and binaural noise suppression algorithms and its use for the hearing impaired

A single‐channel noise suppression algorithm based on the Ephraim–Malah suppression scheme [Y. Ephraim and D. Malah, IEEE Trans. Acoust. Speech Signal Process. 32, 1109–1121 (1984)] was tested with hearing‐impaired subjects for different noise conditions. Significant benefits could be demonstrated for hearing‐impaired subjects regarding reductions in listener fatigue and in the mental effort needed to listen to speech in noise over longer periods of time. However, an improvement of speech reception thresholds measured with the Gottingen sentence test could not be shown. Hence, a combination of the single‐channel noise suppression scheme with the directional filter binaural noise reduction algorithm [T. Wittkop and V. Hohmann, this conference] is investigated. While the directional filter is assumed to suppress distinct noise sources, as, for example, jammer talkers that are not located in the desired direction, the monaural noise suppression algorithm reduces the diffuse stationary noise floor. Different ...