Patent ID: 11967334
Assignee: SIVANTOS PTE. LTD.
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 10:
11. A hearing device, comprising:
an acousto-electric input transducer configured to record a sound from surroundings of the hearing device and to convert the sound into an input audio signal;
a signal processing apparatus connected to said input transducer and configured to generate an output audio signal from the input audio signal; and
an electro-acoustic output transducer connected to said signal processing apparatus and configured to convert the output audio signal into an output sound; and
wherein said input transducer, said signal processing apparatus, and said output transducer are configured to perform the following method steps:
recording with said input transducer a sound which contains the speech signal from surroundings of the hearing device, and converting the sound into an input audio signal;
performing a signal processing operation for generating an output audio signal based on the input audio signal;
quantitatively acquiring at least one articulatory and/or prosodic feature of the speech signal through analysis of the input audio signal by way of the signal processing operation, and deriving from the property a quantitative measure of a speech quality of the speech signal; and
setting at least one parameter of the signal processing operation for generating the output audio signal on a basis of the quantitative measure of the speech quality of the speech signal; and
selectively deriving the quantitative measure as a binary measure or as a discrete measure or as a continuous measure, and:
a) with the quantitative measure being a binary measure:
the binary measure adopting a first value or a second value depending on the speech quality;
wherein the first value is assigned to a sufficiently good speech quality of the speech signal and the second value is assigned to an insufficient speech quality of the speech signal;
wherein, for the first value, the at least one parameter of the signal processing operation is preset to a first parameter value that corresponds to a regular mode of the signal processing operation; and
wherein, for the second value, the at least one parameter of the signal processing operation is set to a second parameter value different from the first parameter value; or

b) with the quantitative measure being a discrete measure:
the discrete measure adopting a value from a value range of at least three discrete values depending on the speech quality; and
mapping individual values of the quantitative measure monotonically onto corresponding discrete parameter values for the at least one parameter; or

c) with the quantitative measure being a continuous measure:
the continuous measure adopting a value from a continuous value range depending on the speech quality; and
mapping individual values of the quantitative measure monotonically onto corresponding parameter values from a continuous parameter interval for the at least one parameter.