Contribution
An experimental setup for the estimation and emulation of bone and air conducted components of one’s own voice
* Presenting author
Abstract:
All transfer paths relevant to one's own voice perception can be categorized into two types: Air conducted (AC) components travel from the speaker's mouth through the air into the ear canals. Bone conducted (BC) components on the other hand travel through the speaker's head to the outer, middle, and inner ear. Thus, one's own voice perception is changed two-fold by an occlusion of the ear canal: AC components, especially higher-frequency ones, are attenuated and lower-frequency BC components at the outer ear are amplified. These effects are often called insertion loss and occlusion effect and are a well-known source of dissatisfaction for hearing aid users especially. Literature reports an approach to separate the two types of transmissions by placing large ear muffs over both ears. Due to their large volume, they are not expected to create significant low frequency amplification while attenuating air conducted components significantly enough to isolate both types of sound transmissions. In an effort to implement and validate this experimental setup, we test the insertion loss and absence of low frequency ampflification. Building on this system, we aim at controlling AC attenuation and BC ampflification virtually, thereby emulating different levels of occlusion to study own voice perception.