Enhancing perception of frequency-lowered speech

摘要

Among other things, a sound processing device system is disclosed to assist a hearing-impaired human listener recognize speech sounds or phonemes. The device system may be configured at least to generate an output audio signal at least by transposing and causing a negative rank ordering of frequency of at least a portion of the input audio signal. Compression also may be performed on the at least the portion of the input audio signal as part of generating the output audio signal. The negative rank ordering may be performed on a high-frequency portion of the input audio signal that becomes a low-frequency portion of the output audio signal by the transposing. The low-frequency portion of the output audio signal may represent an inverted ordering of frequencies or frequency segments present in the high-frequency portion of the input audio signal.