Third-octave analysis of multichannel amplitude compressed speech

Multiband amplitude compression has been studied as a compensation for the reduced auditory dynamic range often associated with sensorineural hearing loss, since it is capable of altering the dynamic range of speech as a function of frequency. Compression systems are generally characterized by their response to steady state tones and to simple dynamic stimuli, such as tone bursts. Level distributions of unprocessed and compressed materials are presented to demonstrate that these descriptions are inadequate to predict the processing of speech. A simple analysis of multiband compression which incorporates the interactions of static and dynamic properties is presented.