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The perceptual significance of high-frequency energy in the human voice

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I stumbled upon this study from that goes into the problem of people with hearing aids not understanding conversations.
The authors show that hearing aids are only made to work in a narrow band of the lowest frequencies based on century old telephone studies. They then go on to show that, in fact, we need to hear higher frequencies from 8Khz to as much as 9 and 15Khz to understand words. It a deep read into why our aids really don’t work right. But it seems that if we were to work on tweaking the settings of our aids to amplify its highest ranges we could improve our understanding significantly.
I am surprised that no one is talking about these findings. they are definitely significant.

Abstract

While human vocalizations generate acoustical energy at frequencies up to (and beyond) 20 kHz, the energy at frequencies above about 5 kHz has traditionally been neglected in speech perception research. The intent of this paper is to review (1) the historical reasons for this research trend and (2) the work that continues to elucidate the perceptual significance of high-frequency energy (HFE) in speech and singing. The historical and physical factors reveal that, while HFE was believed to be unnecessary and/or impractical for applications of interest, it was never shown to be perceptually insignificant. Rather, the main causes for focus on low-frequency energy appear to be because the low-frequency portion of the speech spectrum was seen to be sufficient (from a perceptual standpoint), or the difficulty of HFE research was too great to be justifiable (from a technological standpoint). The advancement of technology continues to overcome concerns stemming from the latter reason. Likewise, advances in our understanding of the perceptual effects of HFE now cast doubt on the first cause. Emerging evidence indicates that HFE plays a more significant role than previously believed, and should thus be considered in speech and voice perception research, especially in research involving children and the hearing impaired.##

The perceptual significance of high-frequency energy in the human voice2

While human vocalizations generate acoustical energy at frequencies up to (and beyond) 20 kHz, the energy at frequencies above about 5 kHz has traditionally been neglected in speech perception research. The intent of this paper is to review (1) the...

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As we age we lose our high frequencies. When we are young we can hear the higher frequencies. I am 76 and the highest frequency i can hear even with the highest power is about 10khz. But when I was younger and doing communications in the military i could hear frequencies as high as 18k hz.

Anybody know the frequency range of cochlear implants?
With current hearing aid tech getting much gain past 4kHz is pretty challenging and of minimal value as the cochlea is often non functional at high frequencies.
The Earlens is a light based hearing aid that claims higher frequency response but seems to have a limited following.

@MDB said:

Anybody know the frequency range of cochlear implants?


Learn more…Opens in new tab6

[image]

Cochlear implants typically filter audio signals into 12 to 22 frequency bands that cover the speech spectrum, which is usually 200–8000 Hz. The speech processor in the implant digitizes the signal and separates it into these bands.

With mems speakers in our future, this might become more than of academic interest. For those of us with severe hearing loss at 8k, do we assume that regions much above that are dead?

MEMS speakers are usually designed to work in a frequency range from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, which is consistent with the hearing range of humans.

Impressive.
Big possibilities.
I have read about musicians hearing things most people don’t in the upper most frequencies.

Dr cliff has just made a video about this
Why High Frequency Hearing Aids are so CRITICAL

Very interesting, that’s what I’ve always thought.

I hope xmems technology can cover deep losses at high frequencies, but I’m starting to have a lot of doubts that they will be able to do it.

What Cliff specifically fails to mention is that only the Intent 1 Clear Dynamics go out to 10Khz, the 2 is 8+Khz. So basically they have the option to include it all models as it’s a receiver function, but they deliberately hobble it out of the lesser models; like the accelerometer function.

Oticon don’t pay me to push their gear (exactly the opposite tbh), so I have to apply a bit more critical thinking to the fitting process.

Wow, I didn’t know that. Seems very unfair. The technology has to be in the Intent 2. I cannot imagine they have a different chip in them.

It’s the same chip and the same receiver, but they deliberately cut the frequency response in the lesser models.

I’m thinking it’s one thing to not include some of the dsp in the lesser models but quite another to take active steps to hobble the capabilities of the hardware that the user has paid for.

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