Principal-component amplitude compression for the hearing impaired

Principal-component amplitude compression, a means for matching speech to the reduced dynamic range in sensorineural hearing impairments, is a multiband approach aimed at preserving details of spectral shape while reducing overall level variation. The effect of compression has been studied for the first and second principal components (PC1 an PC2) of the short-term speech spectrum, which are roughly representative of overall level and spectral tilt, respectively. Compression of PC1 roughly equalizes consonant and vowel levels while compression of PC2 provides time-varying high-frequency emphasis. The effect on speech intelligibility of sensorineural hearing-impaired listeners of two principal-component compression system implementations, compression of PC1 and compression of both PC1 and PC2, was compared to that of linear amplification (LA), independent compression of multiple bands (MBC), and wideband compression (WC). Results indicate that compression of overall level as provided by compression of PC1 and WC improved intelligibility relative to LA over a 10- to 15-dB range of input levels. While MBC was beneficial in some cases, it did not provide higher intelligibility than WC. Compression of PC2 did not benefit but rather degraded performance relative to LA. Error analyses and band-level measurements indicate that the highest intelligibility is obtained when audibility is improved and the relative spectral shapes of different speech sounds are preserved.