CN117425122A

CN117425122A - Audio signal processing method for hearing aid and hearing aid

Info

Publication number: CN117425122A
Application number: CN202311583685.2A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 王东亚; 王海
Original assignee: Xiaowei Health Technology Shenzhen Co ltd
Current assignee: Xiaowei Health Technology Shenzhen Co ltd
Priority date: 2023-11-24
Filing date: 2023-11-24
Publication date: 2024-01-19

Abstract

The invention provides an audio signal processing method for a hearing aid and the hearing aid, wherein the method comprises the following steps: step one, receiving input sound; step two, judging whether the input sound needs to be subjected to frequency correction processing or not; and step three, if the input sound in the step two is required to be subjected to frequency correction processing, the input sound is processed into a modified input sound. The key point of the judging method is to judge the frequency and the sound energy of the input sound, and the modified input sound will raise the sound energy of low frequency. The invention provides an audio signal processing method for a hearing aid and the hearing aid, which can recognize the sound actually needing enhancement processing and correct the frequency of the sound.

Description

Audio signal processing method for hearing aid and hearing aid

Technical Field

The present application relates to the field of hearing aids, and in particular to an audio signal processing method for a hearing aid and a hearing aid.

Background

Hearing aids have long been developed, mainly to amplify sound to help hearing impaired patients hear sounds that would otherwise not be audible. Thus, the speaker can hear the hearing impaired without deliberately amplifying the sound. However, the inaudible sounds of hearing impaired patients have two characteristics: too high a frequency and too low an intensity. Sounds with these two characteristics are easily ignored by hearing impaired patients. Sounds such as "Lei", "Lei" and "Lei" have such characteristics that the syllables are not easy to hear by the hearing impaired patient. However, the current hearing aids mainly enhance the energy of the whole sound, so that the syllable part which really needs to be enhanced cannot be recognized, and thus the amplified sound is distorted, so that the hearing impaired patient cannot hear the amplified sound.

Disclosure of Invention

In view of the foregoing, it is desirable to provide a method and apparatus for recognizing and frequency correcting sounds that actually require enhancement processing. The invention provides an audio signal processing method for a hearing aid and the hearing aid.

To achieve the above object, the audio signal processing method for a hearing aid according to the present invention includes the steps of:

step one, receiving input sound;

judging whether the input sound needs to be subjected to frequency correction processing, wherein the input sound meets the following index criterion and needs to be subjected to frequency correction processing:

the ratio of sound energy at frequencies below 1000 hertz (Hz) to all sound energy of the input sound is 0% to 25%; and is also provided with

The ratio of sound energy below 6000 hertz (Hz) frequency to all sound energy of the input sound is a), wherein a is a number between 0 and 80; and

step three, if the input sound in the step two is subjected to frequency correction processing, the input sound is processed into a modified input sound, wherein the modified input sound comprises a plurality of sounds with different frequencies, and the proportion of sound energy with a frequency lower than 6000 hertz (Hz) relative to all sound energy of the modified input sound is b%, wherein B is 1.15 times to 10000 times of a.

The hearing aid for improving the accuracy of the sound heard by the hearing impaired patient comprises a sound receiver, a sound processing module and a loudspeaker. A sound receiver for receiving an input sound; the sound processing module is electrically connected with the sound receiver and is used for judging whether the input sound needs to be subjected to frequency correction processing and providing the modified input sound, wherein the input sound needing to be subjected to frequency correction has the following standard: the ratio of sound energy at frequencies below 1000 hertz (Hz) to all sound energy of the input sound is 0% to 25%; and the ratio of sound energy at frequencies below 6000 hertz (Hz) to all sound energy of the input sound is a), wherein a is a number between 0 and 80; and a ratio of sound energy of frequencies below 6000 hertz (Hz) in the modified input sound to all sound energy of the modified input sound is B, wherein B is 1.15 to 10000 times a; and the loudspeaker is electrically connected with the sound processing module and outputs input sound or modified input sound.

Drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present application or the technical solutions in the related art, the drawings that are required to be used in the embodiments or the related technical descriptions will be briefly described below, and it is apparent that the drawings in the following description are only embodiments of the present application, and other drawings may be obtained according to the provided drawings without inventive effort to those of ordinary skill in the art.

Fig. 1 is an overall architecture diagram of a hearing aid according to the invention.

Fig. 2 is a flowchart of steps of the sound processing module of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a ZhuYin energy/frequency distribution graph of the present invention.

Fig. 4 is a spectrogram of the present invention.

Fig. 5 is a sound energy diagram of the gamma' of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a sound spectrum of the 'ㄠ' embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a sound energy diagram of the present invention 'j ㄠ'.

FIG. 8 is a diagram of a first embodiment of the present invention for processing input sound "Jie ㄠ" showing a sound spectrum of "Jie ㄠ".

Fig. 9 is a sound energy diagram of a first embodiment of the modified input sound ㄠ of the present invention, showing the energy diagram of the sound ㄠ.

Fig. 10 is a sound spectrum of a second embodiment of the modified input sound ㄠ of the present invention, showing the j ㄠ.

Fig. 11 is a sound energy diagram of a second embodiment of the modified input sound ㄠ of the present invention, showing the energy diagram of the sound ㄠ.

Detailed Description

In order to facilitate an understanding of the present application, a more complete description of the present application will now be provided with reference to the relevant figures. Preferred embodiments of the present application are shown in the accompanying drawings. This application may, however, be embodied in many different forms and is not limited to the embodiments described herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete.

It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "fixed to" another element, it can be directly on the other element or intervening elements may also be present. When an element is referred to as being "connected" to another element, it can be directly connected to the other element or intervening elements may also be present. The terms "inner", "outer", "left", "right" and the like are used herein for illustrative purposes only and do not represent the only embodiment.

Unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this application belongs. The terminology used herein in the description of the application is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the application. The term "and/or" as used herein includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items.

Reference is now made to fig. 1, which is a block diagram of a hearing aid according to the present invention.

The hearing aid 10 of the present invention comprises a sound receiver 11, a sound processing module 12 and a speaker 13. The sound receiver 11 is configured to receive an input sound 20 emitted from the sound source 80, and transmit the input sound to the speaker 13 after being processed by the sound processing module 12. The sound receiver 11 may be any device capable of receiving sound, such as a microphone, and the speaker 13 may be any device capable of broadcasting, such as an earphone, but the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned device. The sound processing module 12 is generally composed of a sound processing chip and a control circuit, and an amplifying circuit; the solution technique is also composed of a processor, a memory collocation control circuit and an amplifying circuit. The key point of the sound processing module 12 is to amplify the sound signal, filter out noise, change the sound frequency composition, and process the sound signal to achieve the purpose of the present invention, and the sound processing module 12 can be composed of common hardware and new software, so the hardware structure of the sound processing module 12 is not described again. The hearing aid 10 of the present invention may be a dedicated machine that tailors hardware, or may be a small electronic device such as a tablet computer, a cell phone, or the like.

With continued reference to fig. 2, a flowchart of steps of the sound processing module of the present invention is shown. Referring to fig. 3 to 7, the present invention relates to a related embodiment.

Step 301: an input sound 20 is received.

This step is performed by the sound receiver 11, receiving the input sound 20 emitted from the sound source 80.

Step 302: noise reduction is performed on the input sound 20.

After the sound receiver 11 receives the input sound 20, the sound processing module 12 performs noise reduction processing.

Step 303: it is determined whether the input sound 20 needs to be subjected to frequency correction processing.

The step 303 performed by the sound processing module 12 is an important step in the present invention. According to the preset condition of the sound processing module 12, it is determined whether the frequency correction process is required for the input sound 20. Referring first to fig. 3, a note energy/frequency distribution table according to the present invention is shown, and fig. 3 is a graph of research data generated during the implementation of the present invention. The horizontal axis of fig. 3 is 37 ZhuYin symbols, the right vertical axis is frequency (Hz), and the left vertical axis is volume (dB). It can be seen from fig. 3 that all voices are generated to cover various frequencies including low, medium and high frequencies, and most of the sound energy of the Chinese phonetic symbols is concentrated in the low frequency range of 20-1000 Hz, but there are several phonetic symbols such as "zhi", "zhi" or "zhi", the energy proportion of the low frequency is very low, and the energy is almost concentrated in the high frequency part. However, the sensitivity of the hearing-impaired patient to the high-frequency sound is very low (for example, 6000Hz or more), that is, the high-frequency sound such as "one of" and "one of" two "is emitted at a relatively large volume, and the hearing-impaired patient may hear the sound, but if the hearing-impaired patient emits the sound at a relatively large volume as a whole, the low-frequency part is too loud for the hearing-impaired, so that the problem cannot be solved by amplifying the sound as a whole. Even if the filtering technique is used to boost only high frequency energy, it still occurs that the sound has exceeded the threshold of the hearing impaired patient but is still inaudible.

Some prior art techniques reduce the frequency of all sounds and re-amplify the energy of the sounds to the hearing impaired patient, and although the hearing impaired patient can be helped to hear the sounds that were originally at high frequencies, the sounds are severely spoiled due to the reduced frequency of all sounds (including what was originally audible), which causes an obstacle to the hearing impaired patient when learning to pronounce.

The invention provides an audio signal processing method for a hearing aid, which aims to perform frequency reduction processing on sound fragments with relatively large high-frequency energy and modify the sound fragments into modified input sound 21 (step 304); otherwise, the input sound 20 is not frequency processed.

The input sound 20 to be frequency processed has the following characteristics: in the case of the sound digital signal sampling rate of 44100Hz, the ratio value of the sound energy of the input sound 20 at a frequency lower than 1000Hz to the total sound energy of the input sound 20 (represented by ρ0m) is 0% -25%, and the ratio value of the sound energy of the input sound 20 at a frequency lower than 6000Hz to the total sound energy of the input sound 20 (represented by ρ1m) is a%, wherein a is a number between 0 and 80. If the input sound 20 meets both conditions, it means that its energy is concentrated in the high frequency part and is not easily heard by the hearing impaired patient, so its frequency must be processed.

The determination of step 303 may be implemented in a variety of ways in practical engineering, and in order to quickly (e.g., in 0.01 seconds) determine whether the determination of step 304 is needed, such as determining the energy of each 1024Hz sampling frequency, and then determining whether the determination meets the above two features by using the Fuzzy Logic, the determination is performed in a variety of ways in mathematical operations, which is not the invention and therefore not described herein. It should be noted that, in the judging manner of step 303, different thresholds may be set, and the above two features are the minimum requirements after experimental calculation, where the two features are preferably: the ratio of the sound energy of the input sound 20 at frequencies below 1000Hz to the total sound energy of the input sound 20 (ρ0m) is 0% -20%, and the ratio of the sound energy of the input sound 20 at frequencies below 6000Hz to the total sound energy of the input sound 20 (ρ1m) is a%, wherein a is a number between 0 and 70.

Next, please refer to fig. 4 and fig. 5. Fig. 4 shows a sound spectrum of [ gamma ] (horizontal axis is time and vertical axis is amplitude), "and fig. 5 shows a sound energy graph of [ gamma ] (horizontal axis is time and vertical axis is frequency, sound energy is decreased from top to bottom and is expressed by gray scale, the deeper the energy is, the shallower the energy is, the smaller the energy is) and the concentration of energy is in the range of 1000 to 2000Hz in fig. 5, and the calculated ρ0m is less than 25% and ρ1m is approximately 100 and is not in the range of 0 to 80, so that frequency correction is not performed on [ gamma ].

Referring to fig. 6 and 7, fig. 6 is a sound spectrum of "ㄠ" and fig. 7 is a sound energy of "Ji ㄠ". From fig. 7, it is found that the sound can be divided into three syllables, wherein the first syllable is "qin", ρ0m is 0.2% less than 25%, and ρ1m is a value of 0.4%, which means that energy is almost concentrated above 6000Hz, so that the "qin" sound is difficult to hear for hearing impaired patients, and the frequency thereof must be processed. Conversely, the second syllable ρ0m is 16.3% less than 25%, but ρ1m is approximately 100%; since the third syllable ρ0m is 99.9% or more and 25%, the frequency correction of the second syllable and the third syllable is not required.

Step 304: the input sound 20 is processed as modified input sound 21.

If it is determined in step 303 that the frequency correction is required for the input sound 20, in step 304, the input sound 20 is corrected to the modified input sound 21, and the modified input sound 21 has the following characteristics: the ratio of the sound energy of the modified input sound 21 with the frequency lower than 6000Hz to the total sound energy of the modified input sound 21 is B, wherein B is 1.15 to 10000 times of a, and preferably 1.3 to 10000 times of a for better effect. In this way, the energy occupied by the high frequency portion of the modified input sound 21 is reduced, which is easier for the hearing impaired patient to hear than the original input sound 20.

There are various methods for processing the frequency of the sound, and the method is generally frequency-compressing or frequency-shifting. The frequency compressing method is to compress the sound of a certain frequency range to another smaller frequency range in equal proportion. For example, when the original frequency of sound is 0 to 6000Hz and compressed to 0 to 3000Hz, the original frequency of sound with 3000Hz is changed to 1500Hz. The frequency shift is to shift the sound in a certain frequency range to another frequency range, for example, the sound with the original frequency of 3000-9000 Hz is shifted down by 3000Hz to be 0-6000 Hz. The frequency-compressing or frequency-shifting method is a conventional method, and therefore, it is not repeated here, and it should be noted that the frequency correction method of the present invention is not limited thereto, and other methods can be adopted as long as similar effects can be achieved.

Assuming that the sound source 80 emits "Jib ㄠ" as the input sound 20, the sound processing module 12 determines that the frequency correction is required in step 303, so that the "press frequency" or "shift frequency" process is performed in step 304 to correct the input sound as the modified input sound 21. Referring to FIGS. 8 and 9, the first syllable of the original high frequency is compressed to a lower frequency range after the "ㄠ" is subjected to the frequency compressing treatment (0-22050 Hz- > 0-11025 Hz), B is 96.1% after the treatment and is greater than 1.15 times of A (0.04%), and the second and third syllables have no change, so that the 5000HZ energy is increased as shown in FIG. 9.

Referring to fig. 10 and 11, after the "n ㄠ" is shifted (the frequency above 7000Hz is shifted down by 7000 Hz), the original high frequency first syllable is shifted to a lower frequency range, and after the treatment B is 98.3%, which is greater than 1.15 times of a (0.4%), while the second and third syllables have no variation, and fig. 11 shows that the energy of 1000Hz is increased.

Step 305: the input sound 20 or the modified input sound 21 is subjected to sound amplification processing.

The sound given to the hearing impaired patient 81 is amplified, but is usually amplified not in equal proportion, but rather amplified in a higher proportion to a particularly small sound, and amplified in a lower proportion to a larger sound, so the sound processing module 12 usually includes a sound amplifying module or amplifier. Since step 305 is prior art, it is not described here in detail.

Step 306: the speaker 13 plays sound.

The speaker 13 plays the sound processed by the sound processing module 12.

It should be noted that the hearing aid 10 should be able to process the sound rapidly so that the hearing impaired patient 81 can hear the sound in a nearly synchronous manner, the sound length of the input sound 20 should be as short as possible, so that the delay time is shortened, for example, the above procedure is performed every 0.01 seconds, so that the length of each input sound 20 is actually 0.01 seconds, for example, the time of "ㄠ" is 1 second, and the judgment is actually performed 100 times (each time the sound of 0.01 seconds is grasped to judge whether to process or not, the sound received first is judged first, and the sound received first is judged first), and assuming that the first syllable "takes 0.1 seconds, the rest takes 0.9 seconds, the input sound 20 of the first 10 times is processed as the modified input sound 21, and the input sound 20 of the last 90 times is not processed as the modified input sound 21.

The above technique can also be used for other languages, and of course, the experimental results are particularly useful for words with short syllables, such as Chinese, japanese and Korean words, which are mostly short syllables, and taking Chinese as an example, each word of all Chinese has at most three syllables. The effect on multi-syllable languages such as English is lower, but because all languages have short syllables, such as English (Say), hearing impaired patients often Say A, but after the simulation experiment of the processing mode of the invention, the output sound of Say is quite similar to Say without deterioration.

The technical features of the above-described embodiments may be arbitrarily combined, and all possible combinations of the technical features in the above-described embodiments are not described for brevity of description, however, as long as there is no contradiction between the combinations of the technical features, they should be considered as the scope of the description. The above examples merely represent a few embodiments of the present application, which are described in more detail and are not to be construed as limiting the scope of the invention. It should be noted that it would be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and improvements could be made without departing from the spirit of the present application, which would be within the scope of the present application. Accordingly, the scope of protection of the present application is to be determined by the claims appended hereto.

Claims

1. An audio signal processing method for a hearing aid, comprising the steps of:

step one, receiving input sound;

2. The audio signal processing method for a hearing aid according to claim 1, wherein in step two, the ratio of sound energy of frequencies below 1000 hertz (Hz) in the input sound to all sound energy of the input sound is 0% to 20%.

3. The audio signal processing method for a hearing aid according to claim 2, wherein a is a number between 0 and 70.

4. A method of processing audio signals for a hearing aid according to any one of claims 1-3, characterised in that B is 1.3 to 10000 times a.

5. A method of processing audio signals for a hearing aid according to any one of claims 1 to 3, characterised in that in step three the input sound is processed into the modified input sound using a frequency-compressing or frequency-shifting processing method.

6. A hearing aid for receiving input sound and for processing said input sound for output to a hearing impaired patient, said hearing aid comprising:

a sound receiver for receiving an input sound;

the sound processing module is electrically connected with the sound receiver and is used for judging whether the input sound needs to be subjected to frequency correction processing and providing the modified input sound, wherein the input sound needing to be subjected to frequency correction has the following standard: the ratio of sound energy at frequencies below 1000 hertz (Hz) to all sound energy of the input sound is 0% to 25%; and the ratio of sound energy at frequencies below 6000 hertz (Hz) to all sound energy of the input sound is a), wherein a is a number between 0 and 80; and a ratio of sound energy of frequencies below 6000 hertz (Hz) in the modified input sound to all sound energy of the modified input sound is B, wherein B is 1.15 to 10000 times a; and

and the loudspeaker is electrically connected with the sound processing module.

7. Hearing aid according to claim 6, characterized in that the input sound to be frequency corrected has a ratio of sound energy of a frequency well below 1000 hertz (Hz) to all sound energy of the input sound of 0-20%.

8. Hearing aid according to claim 7, characterized in that a is a number between 0 and 70.

9. The hearing aid according to any one of claims 6-8, wherein B is 1.3 to 10000 times a.

10. The hearing aid according to any one of claims 6-8, wherein the sound processing module processes the input sound into the modified input sound using a frequency-compressing or frequency-shifting processing method.