Hearing Aids That Improve Hearing of Speech in Noisy Environments

by Kathy Fairbanks

At the Hearing Loss Association of America East Bay Chapter Nov. 9, 2019 meeting, guest speaker was Dr. Shariq Mobin, Ph.D., a graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, with a
doctorate in auditory neuroscience and machine learning. During the last few years, Dr. Mobin has been researching algorithms that amplify specific voices in noisy places where it’s often difficult to hear what people are saying. Dr. Mobin is the founder and CEO of AudioFocus, Inc., a start-up developing new hearing aid technology to help people hear better in noisy environments.

Initially, Dr. Mobin set out the 3 goals of his presentation: 1) Teach us about Bluetooth technology; 2) Learn more about our specific hearing issues; 3) Share the research on which AudioFocus is working as they try to build hearing aids (H/A’s) to improve hearing of speech in noisy environments.

Bluetooth Technology Applications to Hearing Aids:

Bluetooth is simply a way for our devices to communicate wirelessly, instead of plugging a wire from one device to another. There are two main functions of Bluetooth that are particularly relevant for hearing aids (H/A’s): 1) You can communicate commands to adjust the volume or the settings of your H/A’s with your phone, rather than having to press buttons on your H/A’s; and 2) You can stream audio directly to your H/A’s from your phone so the sound is enhanced without having to press the phone up to your ears. Another example of Bluetooth application is where you
can plug a device into your TV that streams the audio directly from the TV to your H/A’s, and then you can hear the TV a lot better.

In addition, there are many other new special ways that you can edit how your H/A’s are functioning, based on commands on your phone or other devices. For example, there is the sound
enhancer which allows you to increase the volume of high/treble sound frequencies, which are more often a problem in age-related hearing loss than low/bass frequencies. Other features in hearing aid apps that are now available include: Reduction of background noise in noisy environments; speech focus on direction of a person’s voice; switching between different profiles (outside vs. home).

Bluetooth allows you to adjust the settings of your hearing aids with a more fine-grained control. In fact, both Google and Apple are spending a lot of time and effort on adding functionality to apps on their phones to make it easier for individuals to adjust their own H/A’s in order to enhance their hearing without always having to see an audiologist for necessary adjustments, but only after the audiologist’s initial hearing testing, prescription, and H/A’s programming.

Specific Hearing Issues & Problems:

Moving on to his second goal of learning more about our specific hearing issues, Dr. Mobin first asked how many audience members actually use Bluetooth with their hearing aids. Only about a quarter of the present audience members raised their hand to acknowledge that they used Bluetooth technology with their hearing aids, or even knew how to effectively access or apply some of the Bluetooth functions which he previously described.

Dr. Mobin then asked about “What doesn’t work?” In response, several people mentioned that one of the biggest problems with which individuals with hearing loss are confronted is the difficulty of hearing adequately in noisy environments, such as restaurants, cafes, parties, musical events, meetings, television and driving in cars or trucks. Even when wearing hearing aids, individuals often find it difficult to hear other people’s speech and be able to clearly detect and understand what others are saying when there is a lot of concurrent background noise.

AudioFocus’ Research on Hearing Aids That Improve Hearing of Speech in Noisy Places:

Acknowledging that hearing aids can help most persons to hear better in quiet places, Dr. Mobin explained that his prior research at UC Berkeley and his on-going research at AudioFocus is focusing on solving the major speech detection problem described above. For example, a noisy restaurant is an environment where there might be 10-100 voices, but you may only want to pay attention to the voices of 3-4 friends or family members with you.

Hence, at his company AudioFocus, Dr. Mobin is trying to solve such noisy restaurant problems
by using machine learning to design algorithms for hearing aids that selectively amplify only the sounds important to you and build a custom model or “voice print” for specific people, such as friends and family. Then, if you are in a noisy place and attempting to talk to these specific people, you can rely on the voice prints of those people to selectively amplify only those voices so you can hear those voices, but not all the background noise. Dr. Mobin admits that solving the problem of hearing speech in noisy places is a challenge, and his research is in the early stages.

AudioFocus’ Contact Information: For demo of the current research at AudioFocus, please visit https://www.audiofocus.io/demo. If you are interested in signing up as a volunteer for trying out and helping to improve their early prototype, please email Dr. Shariq Mobin at shariq@audiofocus.io.