Contribution
Verified virtual acoustic environments and comparison of speech intelligibility and hearing aid benefit to standard audiological tests
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Virtual acoustics (VA) plays a pivotal role in enhancing ecological validity in hearing research and audiology by providing realistic and controllable auditory environments. Traditional laboratory settings often fail to replicate the complex acoustic conditions encountered in real-world scenarios, leading to potential discrepancies in auditory perception and behavior. VA addresses this limitation by simulating auditory scenes with precise control over sound source characteristics, spatial configurations, and environmental acoustics. This capability allows researchers to investigate auditory processes under conditions that closely mimic everyday listening environments, thereby improving the generalizability of findings.We present VA versions of three acoustically diverse and challenging real-world environments for which acoustic ground truth measurements exist. Within the suggested Toolbox for Acoustic scenes in hearing research and Audiology (TASHA) scene creation and acoustic models of the Underground, Pub and Living room environment are presented. For the Living room, we demonstrate validity of room acoustic parameters in comparison to the real room, and evaluate speech intelligibility in normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners with and without hearing aids. In comparison to standard audiological tests with anechoic frontal target and frontal or lateral masker, the realistic living room (virtual) acoustics and scenes additionally reduce speech intelligibility with increasing hearing loss.