112results about "Occlusion effect electronic compensation" patented technology

A system and method that reduces the perceptual effect resulting from ear occlusion is disclosed. It comprises of an electro-acoustic feedback network that produces phase cancelling sounds in the ear, where a receiver and a microphone are located. A novel control mechanism is disclosed that controls the response of the feedback network to minimise distortion in the ear while maintaining a desired frequency response for external signals. Devices producing the external signal include hearing aids, personal sound devices, in ear monitors, communications headsets and hearing protectors. The integration of the present invention with these devices improves the user's perception of their own voice.

An occluding hearing aid having anti-occlusion effect techniques combined with at least one improvement which, in the preferred embodiment, includes enhancement of acoustic output in the lower-midrange and bass frequency regions, typically between substantially 40 and 500 Hz, which regions are crucial for natural reproduction of multimedia sound and music but are not optimally processed, and generally not provided at all, in prior art hearing aids in order to avoid exacerbation of the occlusion effect. In specific embodiments, the hearing aid of the present invention includes primary or first microphone exposed to external sound plus a secondary or second microphone exposed to sound within an ear canal, in which a signal produced by the secondary microphone is applied as negative feedback to an input of a non-gain controlling signal process and amplifier driving a hearing aid receiver (transducer), whereby, it has been determined by the present inventor, the occlusion effect may be substantially canceled. The hearing aid further comprises at least one of ten combinational improvements each providing substantial performance benefits over known techniques and devices.

An earphone arrangement comprises a microphone (109) which generates a microphone signal and a sound transducer (101) which radiates a first sound component to a user's ear (103) in response to a drive signal. An acoustic channel (111) is further provided for channeling external sound so as to provide a second sound component to the user's ear (103). An acoustic valve (117) allows the attenuation of the acoustic channel (111) to be controlled in response to a valve control signal. A control circuit (105) generates the valve control signal in response to the microphone signal to provide a variable attenuation resulting in a mixed sound of the first sound component and the second sound component reaching the user's ear (103). The combined use of acoustic and e.g. electric signal paths allows improved performance and in particular allows a dynamic trade-off between open and closed earphone design characteristics with respect to external sounds.

A hearing aid (10) having an active occlusion reduction system (50) that counteracts occluded sounds generated within the volume (24) of the ear canal (20) that is not blocked when the hearing aid (10), or an ear piece thereof, is inserted into the ear canal (20) and an AOR transducer (44, 52) that has a flattened frequency response for low frequency portions of the occlusion sounds to enable a wide range of frequency response by the active occlusion reduction system (50). The low frequency portions of the occlusion sounds may be in the range of 10-100 Hz.

Methods and apparatus for fitting a hearing aid device (3) that includes a part which is arranged in the ear canal (2) of a user (31).

A hearing aid (1) adapted for operation in a sound amplification mode and for operation in an occlusion measurement mode, has a microphone (10) adapted for transforming an acoustic sound level external to a hearing aid users ear canal (4) into a first electrical signal which is guided to an ND converter forming a first digitized electrical signal. The hearing aid has signal processing means with a filter bank (41, 42) with means for splitting an electrical signal into frequency bands, and a receiver (20) adapted for generating acoustic sounds in the ear canal of a user when in said amplification mode, and for transforming the acoustic sound level in the ear canal into a second electrical signal, when in occlusion measurement mode. The invention also provides a system and a method for measuring the occlusion effect

An in-ear monitor system facilitates stereo depth perception using microphones at each ear, minimizes occlusion effects, and provides a digital platform for both audio digital signal processing and wireless transmission.

The headset comprises two earpieces each having a transducer for playing back the sound of an audio signal and received in an acoustic cavity defined by a shell having an ear-surrounding cushion. The active noise control comprises, in parallel, a feedforward bandpass filter receiving the signal from an external microphone, a feedback bandpass filter receiving as input an error signal delivered by an internal microphone, and a stabilizer bandpass filter locally increasing the phase of the transfer function of the feedback filter in an instability zone, in particular a waterbed effect zone around 1 kHz. A summing circuit delivers a weighting linear combination of the signal delivered by these filters together with the audio signal to be played back. Control is non-adaptive, with the parameters of the filters being static.

A method for operating a hearing device including an ambient microphone, a signal processing unit, a receiver and an ear canal microphone. The method includes steps of filtering the audio signal processed by the signal processing unit with a filter having a transfer function including a transfer function from an output of the receiver to an input of the ear canal microphone when the hearing device is turned on and being worn in an ear canal of the user, computing a difference between the audio signal picked up by the ear canal microphone and the filtered signal, and detecting a presence of own-voice of the user based on the difference. Furthermore, a hearing device including an own-voice detection unit is provided, which is adapted to perform the proposed method.

Adaption of signal processing for actively reducing occlusion in hearing apparatuses, and in particular in hearing aids, is to be automated further. For this purpose, a transducer transmission function, which is defined for the transmission path from the input of a receiver via the auditory canal to the output of a microphone, be subjected to an automatic plausibility check. An adjustable filter via which the microphone signal is fed back is only altered if the transducer transmission function is plausible according to a predefined criterion. Disadvantageous convergences of the adaptation algorithm can be avoided hereby and unnecessarily high computing times can be prevented.

A hearing aid having hearing loss-compensating components, active occlusion reduction components, a vent, a tuned piston, and a flexible surround. The piston and the surround combination are assembled on the faceplate and cover the outside end of the vent that is situated on the faceplate. The piston and the surround combination minimize the adverse effects of walk-induced head vibrations.

A method is described for reduction of occlusion effects in an acoustic appliance which closes an auditory channel, wherein an audio signal in the transmission path of the acoustic appliance is processed by a signal processing unit and is emitted via an output transducer, which is arranged in the auditory channel, as an acoustic signal. A resultant sound signal is then detected by an auditory channel microphone and is supplied to a variable loop filter, which is arranged in a feedback loop of an occlusion reduction unit for the acoustic appliance. The output signal from the loop filter is injected into the transmission path of the audio signal. The occlusion reduction unit is in this case controlled adaptively, with at least one signal from the transmission path of the audio signal and/or from the feedback loop being used to control the loop filter for the occlusion reduction unit.

A fitting method is provided for a multichannel hearing aid with at least one low frequency channel having an individually adjustable compressor. The method comprises the steps of first adjusting the characteristic of the compressor according to the hearing loss to be compensated by the hearing aid, followed by the step of increasing the compression ratio of the characteristic of the compressor in the at least one low frequency band. The at least one low frequency channel may further comprise an offset amplifier adding an offset gain to the compressor characteristic, and the method may further comprise the step of adjusting the offset gain in the range from −20 dB to 20 dB. After adjustment according to the method, compressors operating at low frequencies enhance low level signals and attenuate high level signals whereby perception of occlusion is suppressed.

An in-ear monitor assembly includes an internal microphone to facilitate a bidirectional voice communication channel.