- In this video, I'm talking about recent research
that may dramatically improve
the way that hearing aids perform in background noise.
Coming up.
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Hi guys. Cliff Olson,
doctor of audiology
and founder of applied hearing solutions
in Anthem, Arizona.
And on this channel,
I cover a bunch of hearing related information
to help make you a better informed consumer.
So if you're into that,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
And don't forget to click the bell
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The Holy Grail for individuals with a hearing loss
is the ability to separate
speech from background noise.
Whether you're talking to one person,
or whether you're talking to a group of people.
Well I recently saw a video
on the Google AI blog,
that illustrates the ability
to be able to separate out
who you want to hear,
just by looking at that individual.
And inside of this software
that they've created,
it actually is pretty impressive.
So instead of me trying to describe it to you,
let me actually show it to you.
- I'm not a fan of flying, I hate it,
hate being on a plane - Cause he might say
- In general there's
- so many noises. - My stripes are solid
- You know what I mean.
I won't flush a toilet
on an airplane - Uh-oh a talking Zebra.
- Because of the noise, like it scares me.
You go, you hit flush
and you turn around,
nothing happens for five seconds.
Then out of nowhere (loud noises)
Oh my God, I just put a hole in the plane...
- The city bus does not (mumbles)
It's like a load of UN-rated whales
every time you get on it.
We all walk through the same door.
We all pay the same price.
- Now if you ask me that's pretty impressive.
But the number one most difficult listening situation
that most people encounter is a noisy restaurant.
So in this next clip, I'm gonna show you their ability
to separate out speech from background noise
in a cafeteria setting.
- So, the task is
given a video any person who you see talking,
their audio gets cleaned up
and everything else gets suppressed.
- So the task is
given a video any person who you see talking,
their audio gets cleaned up
and everything else gets suppressed.
- Now I don't know about you,
but I feel like this technology inside of hearing aids
would be a complete game-changer.
So I went ahead and downloaded the full article
to read through it to see how much viability
this would have in future generations of hearing aids.
The article is titled "Looking to Listen
at the Cocktail Party: A Speaker-Independent
Audio-Visual Model for Speech Separation".
And this was written by a number of Google researchers.
Here are a few key points that I pulled out of this article.
Number one: these researchers perform this on existing
videos, meaning they didn't do it in real time.
So before you get really excited
about just taking this software,
and putting it into a hearing aid,
listen to what the authors had to say.
"It should be noted that our method does not work
in real-time, and, in its current form,
our speech enhancement is better suited
for the post-processing stage of video editing."
The second thing is that this technology
is a huge leap forward for audio-visual processing.
Previous generations of this type of software
required the software to be trained by a certain voice.
Meaning, if you were going to go to a restaurant
with a certain friend, that certain friend's voice
would have to be programmed into the software
so it knows what to actually look for.
In this particular software, they could actually take
a generalized speech format so it would work
with any individual in any situation
which makes it more viable in a generalized setting
meaning you could go anywhere
and communicate with anyone
and use this particular technology.
The third thing that I got out of the research article
was when they did this in a noisy bar situation
they were able to get rid of the background noise,
but it significantly degraded the speech
of the individual that they were trying to hear.
This is very similar to the limitations
we have in hearing aid technology today.
Being able to remove a speech source from a variety
of other speech sources can be very difficult.
So if they're gonna make this
a viable product inside of a hearing aid,
they're gonna have to fix that as well.
The fourth thing that I got out of this research study
is that they need visual information
to be able to do this audiovisual separation
and hearing aids of course do not have visual information.
At least not yet.
You see, they are actually working on
hearing aid technology that can sense brain activity
for eye movement and if they can do that
and combine it with this audio information,
they may actually be able to determine
who you want to hear based on where you're looking.
While this type of technology is not yet available
inside of hearing aids, it is research like this
that gives hope to individuals with a hearing loss
that struggle in a background noise situation
and absolutely paves the way for future research
for technology that will make its way into hearing aids.
In the meantime, one of the best ways
to improve your ability to understand speech
in a background noise situation is to have
real ear measurements performed on your hearing aids.
Now if you don't know what real ear measurement is,
I highly recommend you watch my video
that will be linked in the card up here
and in the description below.
One other way to dramatically improve your ability
to understand speech in a background noise situation
at the current moment is to use an assisted
listening device, like a Roger Pen,
a Roger Select or a remote microphone.
These types of devices will help cut through
the background noise, because it takes the speech
of the person you want to hear
and sends it right into your hearing aids.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comments section below.
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and if you wanna see other videos just like this one
go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
I'll see you next time.
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