Method for operating a hearing aid, and hearing aid

• US 8,194,900 B2
• Filed: 10/09/2007
• Issued: 06/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/10/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Sivantos Gmbh (WS Audiology A/S)
• Original Assignee: Siemens Audiologische Technik GmbH (Siemens AG)
• Inventors: Fischer, Eghart, Fröhlich, Matthias, Hain, Jens, Puder, Henning, Steinbuβ, André
• Primary Examiner(s): HO, HOANG QUAN TRAN
• Application Number:
  US11/973,578
• Publication Number:
  US 20080107297A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,701 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 381/313
• CPC Class Codes: H04R 2225/41 Detection or adaptation of hearing aid parameters or programs to listening situation, e.g. pub, forest
• CPC Class Codes: H04R 25/407 Circuits for combining signals of a plurality of transducers

Abstract

A “speaker” operating mode is established by a signal processor of a hearing aid for tracking and selecting an acoustic speaker source in an ambient sound. Electric acoustic signals are generated by the hearing aid from the ambient sound that has been picked up, from which signals an electric speaker signal is selected by the signal processor by a database of speech profiles of preferred speakers. The electric speech signal is selectively taken into account in an output sound of the hearing aid in such a way that it will for the hearing-aid wearer acoustically at least be prominent compared with another acoustic source and consequently be better perceived by the hearing-aid wearer.

Claims

1. A method for operating a hearing aid, comprising:

providing a database of speech profiles of preferred speakers;

establishing a speaker operating mode via a signal processor of the hearing aid, the speaker operating mode for tracking and selecting an acoustic speaker source from an ambient sound;

generating electric acoustic signals by the hearing aid from the ambient sound detected by the hearing device; and

selecting an electric speaker signal from the generated signals, the electric speaker signal selected by the signal processor via the database,

wherein the selected signal is taken into account in an output sound of the hearing aid to be acoustically more prominent compared with unselected signals and thereby better perceived by a hearing-aid wearer.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the speech profiles stored in the database are compared with the electric acoustic signals.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising performing a profile evaluating of the electric acoustic signals by the signal processor such that each acoustic signal is allocated an acoustic profile.

4. The method as claimed claim 3,

further comprising comparing the speech profiles in the database with the acoustic profiles by the signal processor, and

during the comparison, determining for the respective electric acoustic signal a probability of containing a speaker.

5. The method as claimed in claim 4, wherein the signal having the highest probability of containing a speaker is output to be acoustically more prominent compared with other signals and thereby better perceived by a hearing-aid wearer.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the speech profiles stored in the database have a ranking allocated by the hearing-aid wearer with which they are rendered via the hearing aid.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the electric speaker signal or signals that are nearest the hearing-aid wearer or which impinge from a 0°

angle in which the hearing-aid wearer is looking and will be made available to the hearing-aid wearer by the output sound.

8. The method as claimed in claim 1,

wherein the signal processor chooses a subordinate acoustic source when no or too many electric speaker signals are selected, and

wherein for the subordinate choice of acoustic source an electric acoustic signal is prioritized by at least one criterion selected from the group consisting of:

volume, frequency range, frequency extremes, tonal range, octave range, a non-recognized speaker, a non-recognized speech, music, as great as possible freedom from interference; and

similar spacing between mutually similar acoustic events.

9. The method as claimed in claim 1, further comprising unmixing the electric acoustic signals effective to separate different speakers from among the electric acoustic signals prior to selecting the electric speaker signal from the generated signals for the tracking of the speaker source, wherein a selected speaker is tracked regardless of a position of a user of the hearing aid in space.