Audio Processing Delay
Conditions
Keywords
Audio, Hearing, Latency, Assistive Listening, Wireless Microphone
Brief summary
Wireless assistive listening systems can dramatically improve intelligibility in noisy environments, but they are cumbersome to use. Digital consumer devices, such as smartphones, could be more accessible and user-friendly, but they suffer from transmission delays that could be disturbing to listeners. Delay has been studied extensively for in-ear devices such as hearing aids, but not for remote microphone systems. This study aims to characterize the tolerable delay for wireless remote microphones both for both the user's own speech and for external sounds. This will provide valuable information for engineers designing next-generation assistive listening systems.
Interventions
OTHERAudio delay
Audio will be captured by several microphones, processed to add an artificial delay, and then played back through headphones. The sound levels and delays for each microphone will be varied.
Sponsors
University of Illinois at Chicago
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Study design
Allocation
NA
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
* Comfortable conversing in English
Exclusion criteria
* Speech or hearing disorder
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Subjective disturbance | Approximately 1 minute intervals | Participants will rate their level of annoyance on a numerical scale from 1 to 7, where 1 indicates no annoyance (the sound seems normal) and 7 is intolerable (it is difficult to communicate). Lower is better. |
Countries
United States
Contacts
CONTACTRyan M Corey, PhD
Outcome results
None listed