Speech processing system for hard of hearing - uses speech vocoder to generate synthetic speech with reduced information content for greater understanding

摘要

The speech processing system for those with extreme hearing defects is designed to reduce the information content of the signals without reducing the level of understanding. The acoustic signals to a microphone are received and converted into electric signals that are amplified before being transmitted to a filter chain that provides an input of a vocoder. Signals can alternatively be provided by a tape recorder. The filter chain has twelve stages in the range 225 Hz to 8.3 kHz. Signals are processed by a low pass stage coupled to a modulator coupled to a summing stage. The synthetic speech provided by the vocoder has a reduced information content and is generated as an output to earphones.