Music Engineering as a Novel Strategy for Enhancing Music Enjoyment in the Cochlear Implant Recipient

Abstract

Objective. Enjoyment of music remains an elusive goal following cochlear implantation. We test the hypothesis that reengineering music to reduce its complexity can enhance the listening experience for the cochlear implant (CI) listener. Methods. Normal hearing (NH) adults (N = 16) and CI listeners (N = 9) evaluated a piece of country music on three enjoyment modalities: pleasantness, musicality, and naturalness. Participants listened to the original version along with 20 modified, less complex, versions created by including subsets of the musical instruments from the original song. NH participants listened to the segments both with and without CI simulation processing. Results. Compared to the original song, modified versions containing only 1–3 instruments were less enjoyable to the NH listeners but more enjoyable to the CI listeners and the NH listeners with CI simulation. Excluding vocals and including rhythmic instruments improved enjoyment for NH listeners with CI simulation but made no difference for CI listeners. Conclusions. Reengineering a piece of music to reduce its complexity has the potential to enhance music enjoyment for the cochlear implantee. Thus, in addition to improvements in software and hardware, engineering music specifically for the CI listener may be an alternative means to enhance their listening experience.

Impact of Noise Reduction Algorithm in Cochlear Implant Processing on Music Enjoyment

“…Alternatively, the noise reduction algorithm may have increased the complexity of the signal through frequent short attenuations of musical notes. This increase in complexity is known to diminish music enjoyment (13,14). Furthermore, the dynamic, constantly varying way in which the noise reduction algorithm attenuates various frequency channels could potentially lead to disturbances that create a more negative music listening experience.…”

“…A study in CI users with a MED-EL device on one side and a Cochlear Nucleus on the other found no significant difference in music enjoyment when either device type was used exclusively (12). Recently, we have shown that the novel strategy of re-engineering the original piece of music by either reducing the complexity of music by decreasing the number of musical instruments or minimizing reverberation can increase music enjoyment (13,14).…”

“…The use of NH individuals overcomes the great heterogeneity present among CI population with respect to etiology, intervention, and rehabilitative outcome-all factors that can significantly impede the testing of a novel hypothesis or strategy. Previous studies have demonstrated the usefulness of CI simulation vocoders in studying music perception and music enjoyment (13,14,17,20). In parallel, impact of a noise reduction algorithm on music enjoyment is also evaluated in longterm CI recipients.…”

Reduction of the Harmonic Series Influences Musical Enjoyment With Cochlear Implants

“…10 Kohlberg et al similarly showed that reengineering of a piece to include fewer musical elements (vocals, piano, guitar, fiddle, snare) enhanced enjoyment in CI listeners compared to normal-hearing listeners. 11 Simplifying more technical aspects of music also seems to positively affect enjoyment in CI listeners. A study by Certo et al demonstrated that minimization of reverberation time increased music enjoyment under CI conditions.…”

A model for music complexity applied to music preprocessing for cochlear implants

“…Complexity reduction was achieved by extracting vocals/bass/drums from stereo recordings and attenuating the other instruments with an adjustable attenuation parameter. A similar approach to reduce music complexity by remixing the music was described in [4] and [5]. In [6] a different approach to reduce (spectral) complexity was investigated in order to increase melody clarity and ease of listening for CI users in instrumental music with reduced-rank approximations of music signals.…”