A hearing device, e.g. a hearing aid or a headset, configured to be worn at or in an ear of a user, the hearing device comprising at least one input transducer for converting a sound in an environment of the hearing device to at least one electric input signal representing said sound; an own voice detector configured to estimate whether or not, or with what probability, said sound originates from the voice of the user, and to provide an own voice control signal indicative thereof, a face mask detector configured to estimate whether or not, or with what probability, said user wears a face mask while speaking, and to provide face mask control signal indicative thereof. A method of operating a hearing device is further disclosed. Thereby an improved hearing aid or headset may be provided.

A hearing aid includes: a first microphone system configured for conversion of sound emitted by a sound source into a first audio signal; a first matched filter configured for filtering the first audio signal into a first filtered audio signal, the first matched filter having a first matching transfer function that substantially matches a first transfer function of a first sound propagation path leading from the sound source to the first microphone system, when a user wears the hearing aid; and a hearing loss processor configured to provide a hearing loss compensated output signal that compensates for a hearing loss of the user based at least in part on the first filtered audio signal.

A hearing aid device and a method for operating the hearing aid device. The hearing aid device has an acousto-electrical transducer, a signal processing unit, an electro-acoustic transducer and a unit for recognizing a wearer's own voice. The hearing aid device detects and recognizes the wearer's own voice by way of the recognition unit and, when the wearer's own voice has been detected, operates the signal processing unit with a modified signal processing parameter that is modified such that the sound of the wearer's own voice is improved.

An intrusive binaural speech intelligibility predictor system receives a target signal comprising speech in left and right essentially noise-free and noisy and/or processed versions at left and right ears of a listener. The system comprises a) first, second, third and fourth input units for providing time-frequency representations of said left and right noise-free and noisy/processed versions of the target signal, respectively; b) first and second Equalization-Cancellation stages adapted to receive and relatively time shift and amplitude adjust the left and right noise-free and noisy/processed versions, respectively, and to provide resulting noise-free and noisy/processed signals, respectively; and c) a monaural speech intelligibility predictor unit for providing final binaural speech intelligibility predictor value SI-Measure based on said resulting noise-free and noisy/processed signals. The Equalization-Cancellation stages are adapted to optimize the SI-Measure to indicate a maximum intelligibility of said noisy/processed versions of the target signal by said listener. The invention may e.g. be used in development systems for hearing aids.

Disclosed herein, among other things, are apparatus and methods for noise characterization and attenuation for hearing assistance devices. In various embodiments, a method of operating a hearing assistance device includes receiving an audio signal using a microphone of the hearing assistance device and identifying a transient in the audio signal. Linear predictive coding (LPC) is used to isolate speech segments and non-speech segments of the transient and fluctuating noise, and the non-speech segments of the transient and fluctuating noise are attenuated to reduce annoyance of the noise and maintain audibility of perceptually important transients in speech.

An audio processing device comprises a) at least one input unit for providing time-frequency representation Y(k,n) of an electric input signal representing sound consisting of target speech and noise signal components, where k and n are frequency band and time frame indices, respectively, b) a noise detection and/or reduction system configured to b1) determine an a posteriori signal to noise ratio estimate γ(k,n) of said electric input signal, and to b2) determine an a priori target signal to noise signal ratio estimate ζ(k,n) of said electric input signal from said a posteriori signal to noise ratio estimate γ(k,n) based on a recursive decision directed algorithm. The application further relates to a method of of estimating an a priori signal to noise ratio. The invention may e.g. be used for the hearing aids, headsets, ear phones, active ear protection systems, handsfree telephone systems, mobile telephones, etc.

(Fig. 1A should be published)

Method for providing hearing assistance to a user by capturing audio signals with a microphone arrangement of a transmission unit; analyzing, by a voice activity detector of the transmission unit, the captured audio signals to judge whether a voice is present close to the microphone arrangement or not, analyzing, by a noise level estimator, the captured audio signals to estimate a surrounding noise level, processing the captured audio signals and transmitting, by a transceiver of the transmission unit, the processed audio signals via a wireless link to a receiver unit, and stimulating the user's hearing, by stimulating means at or in at least one user ear, according to the received audio signals, wherein the audio signals are processed via the wireless link by setting the gain applied to the audio signals according to the close voice/no close voice judgment of the voice activity detector and the estimated surrounding noise level.

A media system and a method of using the media system to accommodate hearing loss of a user, are described. The method includes selecting a personal level-and-frequency dependent audio filter that corresponds to a hearing loss profile of the user. The personal level-and-frequency dependent audio filter can be one of several level-and-frequency-dependent audio filters having respective average gain levels and respective gain contours. An accommodative audio output signal can be generated by applying the personal level-and-frequency dependent audio filter to an audio input signal to enhance the audio input signal based on an input level and an input frequency of the audio input signal. The audio output signal can be played by an audio output device to deliver speech or music that the user perceives clearly, despite the hearing loss of the user. Other aspects are also described and claimed.

A hearing device for enhancing speech intelligibility, the hearing device includes: an input transducer for providing an input signal comprising a speech signal and a noise signal; a processing unit; an acoustic output transducer coupled to the processing unit, the acoustic output transducer configured to provide an audio output signal based on an output signal form the processing unit; wherein the processing unit is configured to determine one or more parameters of the input signal based on a codebook based approach (CBA) processing; and wherein the processing unit is configured to perform a Kalman filtering of the input signal based on the determined one or more parameters so that the output signal has an enhanced speech intelligibility.

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.