Understanding speech in a noisy environment can be difficult for people with hearing loss even with hearing aids. Hearing aid manufacturers have implanted various methods (i.e., directional micro-phones, noise reduction, noise cancelers) to try to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to increase the speech understanding in these difficult listening situations.~This study is evaluating different microphone technologies to determine listening effort when speech is to the back or side of the listener in noisy environment.
This study will compare different microphone technologies in a noisy environment when the dominant speaker is at the front, back, left, or right side of the listener.