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Re: [AUDITORY] Music specific hearing loss



Dear Ross,

I would echo comments already made by saying that music in hearing aids can be problematic, and in the case of mild to moderate losses it can be even worse than music without hearing aids, at least for some dimensions of music (e.g., perception of timbre).

In general the extra frills available in hearing aids like frequency lowering and noise reduction tend to interfere with music perception. In addition, the growing consensus is that less compression is more when music is the input. There are certainly opportunities for improvements in handling music  but they require dedicated music programs. While most manufacturers have these now, there is a wide disparity in outcomes.

We developed the "adaptive music perception" (AMP) test in order to assess perception of music by people with hearing loss. Our approach is to assess individual dimensions using an adaptive threshold procedure. We believe that this can serve as a useful complement to aesthetic judgments of sound quality. The matlab code, documentation, and validation pub are available here:

https://smartlaboratory.org/resources/amp-test/

I know that some individuals have used the AMP test with an audiologist in order to fine-tune their own hearing aids for music.

There are 4 subtests and each takes about 10 minutes to complete.


Best regards,

Frank


———————————————————
Frank A. Russo, PhD

Professor of Psychology
Hear the World Research Chair in Music and Emotional Speech
Ryerson University

Affiliate Scientist, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute

Tel: 416-979-5000, x. 2647 (office), x. 4989 (lab)
Email: russo@xxxxxxxxxx

http://smartlaboratory.org
twitter.com/RyersonSMARTLab







> On Jul 19, 2018, at 10:51 PM, Ross Alexander Hendler <rah232@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> I have a good friend who has moderate to severe hearing loss and although she can hear speech pretty well, thanks to her digital hearing aids, she is having big issues with hearing music. She claims that music sounds flat and distorted and that she can't hear melodies.
> 
> She feels that part of the problem may have to do with bandwidth as hearing aids are designed for speech. She also says that if a piece of music is in a certain key such as C she will hear it as a Bb. 
> 
> As a music lover this has become a big issue for her and I wanted to see if anyone might have any ideas or any engineers I might be able to refer her to.
> 
> Regards,
> Ross

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