A speech intelligibility enhancing system for difficult acoustical conditions is disclosed, the speech intelligibility enhancing system comprising at least one ear plug (201) for insertion in an ear canal (218) of a person, the at least one ear plug being arranged with an ear canal facing portion (401) and an environment facing portion (402), and the at least one ear plug comprising an acoustically attenuating path (214; 214, 213) comprising a vent (214) coupling said environment facing portion (402) with said ear canal facing portion (401); and an electroacoustic path (202, 204, 209; 202, 203, 204, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212) comprising a microphone (202) at said environment facing portion (402), a variable gain (204) and a loudspeaker (209) at said ear canal facing portion (401); wherein said acoustically attenuating path (214; 214, 213) is arranged with a transfer function from said environment facing portion (402) to said ear canal facing portion (401) having a low pass characteristic having a low pass cut¬off frequency and said low pass characteristic attenuating sound by a nominal attenuation (Go) for frequencies below said cut-off frequency.

A method of automatic switching between omnidirectional (OMNI) and directional (DIR) microphone modes in a binaural hearing aid comprising a first microphone system, a second microphone system, where the first microphone system is adapted to be placed in or at a first ear of a user, the second microphone system is adapted to be placed in or at a second ear of said user, the method includes a measurement step, where the spectral and temporal modulations of first and second input signals are monitored, an evaluation step, where the spectral and temporal modulations of the first and second input signal are evaluated by the calculation of an evaluation index of speech intelligibility for each of said signals, and an operational step, where the microphone mode of the first and the second microphone systems of the binaural hearing aid are selected in dependence of the calculated evaluation indexes.

System and methods for processing audio signals are disclosed. In one implementation, a system may include at least one microphone configured to capture sounds from an environment of a user; a wearable camera configured to capture a plurality of images from the environment of the user; and at least one processor. The processor may be configured to receive at least one image of the plurality of images; receive at least one audio signal representative of the sounds captured by the at least one microphone; identify an item of information based on at least one of the at least one image or the at least one audio signal; determine at least a beginning of an informational time period for providing the item of information to the user; and transmit an informational audio signal representative of the item of information to a hearing interface device during the informational time period.

A hearing aid comprises a sensor configured for detecting a focus of an end user on a real sound source, a microphone assembly configured for converting sounds into electrical signals, a speaker configured for converting the electrical signals into sounds, and a control subsystem configured for modifying the direction and/or distance of a greatest sensitivity of the microphone assembly based on detected focus. A virtual image generation system comprises memory storing a three-dimensional scene, a sensor configured for detecting a focus of the end user on a sound source, a speaker configured for conveying sounds to the end user, and a control subsystem configured for causing the speaker to preferentially convey a sound originating from the sound source in response to detection of the focus, and for rendering image frames of the scene, and a display subsystem configured for sequentially displaying the image frames to the end user.

Various systems and methods are disclosed herein to increase the quality of the sound delivered to a user and allow personalization to optimize listening performance and comfort under atypical listening conditions, environment specific adjustment, and data capture to assist in the personalization of the system to the user's needs and preferences. Features disclosed include sound level rating systems that aggregate noise data detected by user's mobile phones or hearing devices to provide a database of real-time noise levels. Additionally, a user's sound settings may be saved in the system by location so that they may be recalled when re-entering a specific location. A remote clinician may tune a hearing device, or a user can tune the device using a pre-recorded audio sample. Also, a user may replay the last X seconds of audio recorded by their hearing device.

Various systems and methods are disclosed herein to increase the quality of the sound delivered to a user and allow personalization to optimize listening performance and comfort under atypical listening conditions, environment specific adjustment, and data capture to assist in the personalization of the system to the user's needs and preferences. Features disclosed include sound level rating systems that aggregate noise data detected by user's mobile phones or hearing devices to provide a database of real-time noise levels. Additionally, a user's sound settings may be saved in the system by location so that they may be recalled when re-entering a specific location. A remote clinician may tune a hearing device, or a user can tune the device using a pre-recorded audio sample. Also, a user may replay the last X seconds of audio recorded by their hearing device.

A hearing loss correction system which is mobile compatible and comprises of a mechanism, wherein the mobile device module when in the OFF condition is used as a hearing assistive and amplification device. The hearing loss correction system comprises a microphone unit, a speaker unit and a mobile phone inbuilt application processor to operatively connect the microphone unit with the speaker unit for recording environmental sound signal though the microphone unit and storage free direct streaming of said recorded sound signal to the speaker unit upon real time amplification and background noise suppression.

A hearing device may include a housing configured to be at least partially inserted into an ear canal of a user and comprising a venting channel, wherein the venting channel is configured to provide for venting between an inner region of the ear canal and an ambient environment outside the ear canal through the venting channel; an acoustic valve comprising a valve member moveable relative to the venting channel between different positions; a sound detector configured to provide an audio signal representative of a detected sound; a processor configured to determine a characteristic from the audio signal and to classify the audio signal by assigning the audio signal to a class from a plurality of predetermined classes depending on the determined characteristic; and an output transducer configured to be acoustically coupled to the inner region of the ear canal.

Described herein is a technique by which a hearing may automatically switch between a directional microphone mode and an omnidirectional microphone mode base upon an estimate of the noise floor as derived from the input signal. A minimum statistics estimator may be used to estimate the noise floor.

A method for tuning filter parameters of a noise cancellation enabled audio system with an ear-mountable playback device comprising a speaker and a feedback noise microphone located in proximity to the speaker comprises provision of acoustic transfer functions between the speaker and the feedback noise microphone, between the speaker and an eardrum, between an ambient sound source and the eardrum and between the ambient sound source and the feedback noise microphone. The parameters of a feedback filter function, which is designed to process a feedback noise signal, are tuned. A noise cancellation performance of the audio system at the eardrum is determined based on each of the acoustic transfer functions and on the feedback filter function.