Patent ID: 10694298

Abstract:
A hearing aid configured for detecting and enhancing speech within an audio environment is disclosed. An incoming audio stream is continuously monitored for the presence of speech within the audio stream. A Codebook Excited Linear Prediction (“CELP”) encoder analyzes the incoming audio stream and outputs an indication of a presence or absence of human speech within the incoming audio stream. Upon detection of human speech, the hearing aid in real time may: amplify the audio input to make the speech more audible to a wearer; filter non-speech audio through isolation of the speech by passing the output of the CELP encoder directly to a CELP decoder; activate a beam-steering process which makes dominant a microphone closest to a speaker while de-prioritizing input from other microphones of the hearing aid; and/or shape the audio spectrum conveyed by the audio input using a response curve optimized for better clarity of human speech.