Hearing Aid Voice Segment Processing for Consonant Clarity
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing hearing aids face challenges in processing speech in real-time with accuracy, leading to sound distortion and difficulty in distinguishing consonants in daily conversations, particularly for hearing-impaired listeners.
Innovation Solution
A method that identifies voice segments as vowels or consonants, applies frequency processing and energy amplification to consonants, and extends the duration of consonant segments to enhance clarity, specifically targeting high and low frequency consonants to improve sound accuracy.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If overall sound compression is applied to compress the sound signal according to a specific proportion, then real-time output is achieved, but serious sound distortion occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the sound signal into different frequency bands (low frequency and high frequency components) and processes each band separately with different compression ratios. This segmentation allows real-time processing while maintaining sound accuracy by applying appropriate compression to each frequency range rather than uniform overall compression.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different compression ratios to different frequency components - specifically using a first compression ratio for low frequency sounds and a second compression ratio for high frequency sounds. This local quality approach ensures that each frequency range is optimized independently, preventing the sound distortion that occurs with uniform compression while maintaining real-time output capability.
2Measurement precision
If consonant high frequency sounds are enhanced by boosting high frequency content, then speech intelligibility is improved, but it becomes very difficult to detect the occurrence of consonants in daily conversations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the frequency parameter by shifting high frequency consonant components to lower frequency ranges. This parameter transformation makes consonants more detectable and distinguishable in the output signal, improving speech intelligibility without requiring complex consonant detection algorithms, as the frequency shifting naturally enhances consonant visibility.
3Manufacturing precision
If high frequency sound segments are processed into low frequency sound segments, then high frequency content is enhanced, but the low frequency sound segments are not processed and vowel-consonant differentiation is not determined
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal processing system that handles both low frequency and high frequency sound segments with different specialized processing approaches. Low frequency sounds receive one type of compression processing while high frequency sounds receive frequency compression and shifting processing. This multi-functional approach ensures comprehensive sound processing capability while maintaining accuracy for each frequency range.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method of processing a voice segment (21, 21a, 21b, 21c) includes checking whether a voice segment (21, 21a, 21b, 21c) is a vowel segment. If the voice segment (21, 21a, 21b, 21c) is not a vowel segment, then the process checks whether the voice segment (21, 21a, 21b, 21c) is a high frequency consonant or a low frequency consonant. If the voice segment (21, 21a, 21b, 21c) is a high frequency consonant, then the voice segment (21, 21a, 21b, 21c) will be processed to lower its frequency.