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An approach to hearing aid design is described, and preliminary acoustical and perceptual measurements are reported, in which an acoustic beam-forming microphone array is coupled to an eye-glasses-mounted eye-tracker. This visually guided hearing aid (VGHA)—currently a laboratory-based prototype—senses direction of gaze using the eye tracker and an interface converts those values into control signals that steer the acoustic beam accordingly. Preliminary speech intelligibility measurements with noise and speech maskers revealed near- or better-than normal spatial release from masking with the VGHA. Although not yet a wearable prosthesis, the principle underlying the device is supported by these findings.

In order to reproduce nearby sound sources with distant loudspeakers to asingle listener,the near field compensated (NFC)method for higher-order Ambisonics (HOA)has been previously proposed. In practical realization, this method requires the use of regularization functions. This study analyzes the impact of twoe xisting and a newp roposed regularization function on the reproduced sound fields and on the main auditory cue for nearby sound sources outside the median plane, i.e, low-frequencies interaural leveld i ff erences (ILDs). The proposed regularization function led to ab etter reproduction of point source sound fields compared to existing regularization functions for NFC-HOA. Measurements in realistic playback environments showed that, for very close sources, significant ILDs for frequencies above about 250 Hz can be reproduced with NFC-HOAa nd the proposed regularization function whereas the existing regularization functions failed to provide ILDs below500 Hz. Alistening test showed that these lower-frequencyILDs provided by the proposed regularization function lead to as ignificantly improvedd istance perception performance. This test also showed that the distance of virtual sources are perceivedless accurately than corresponding physical sources when amplitude cues are not available. PACS no. 43.38.Md, 43.60.Fg, 43.66.Qp 48 ©S.Hirzel Verlag · EAA Favrot, Buchholz: Reproduction of nearbysound sources ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 98 (2012)

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