Modeling Hearing Impairment and Its Effect on Auditory Quality by Auralization

In order to better understand the effect of hearing impairment on the perception of audio signals and speech in everyday life, a thorough understanding of the underlying mechanisms and factors influencing audio and speech reception in various listening conditions is highly desirable. This contribution therefore reviews a series of studies by our group to model audio and speech reception in normal and hearing-impaired listeners in a multidisciplinary approach. In order to make the effect of hearing impairment accessible to normal listeners, an auralization technique is described which does not only include the "attenuation" component of hearing loss, but also the "distortion" component.