- In this video, I'm talking
about recent research
that may dramatically improve
the way that hearing aids
perform in background noise.
Coming up.
(upbeat music)
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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every time I release a new video.
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.
If you liked the video, please share it
and if you wanna see other
videos just like this one
go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
I'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)
