title: Pulse-spreading harmonic complex as an alternative carrier for vocoder simulations of cochlear implants.
abstract: Noise- and sine-carrier vocoders are often used to acoustically simulate the information transmitted by a cochlear implant (CI). However, sine-waves fail to mimic the broad spread of excitation produced by a CI and noise-bands contain intrinsic modulations that are absent in CIs. The present study proposes pulse-spreading harmonic complexes (PSHCs) as an alternative acoustic carrier in vocoders. Sentence-in-noise recognition was measured in 12 normal-hearing subjects for noise-, sine-, and PSHC-vocoders. Consistent with the amount of intrinsic modulations present in each vocoder condition, the average speech reception threshold obtained with the PSHC-vocoder was higher than with sine-vocoding but lower than with noise-vocoding.
authors.affiliation: LMA-CNRS, UPR 7051, Aix-Marseille Université, Centrale Marseille, 4 impasse Nikola TESLA CS 40006, F-13453, Marseille Cedex 13, France.
authors.forename: Quentin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Mesnildrey
authors.affiliation: LMA-CNRS, UPR 7051, Aix-Marseille Université, Centrale Marseille, 4 impasse Nikola TESLA CS 40006, F-13453, Marseille Cedex 13, France.
authors.forename: Gaston
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hilkhuysen
authors.affiliation: LMA-CNRS, UPR 7051, Aix-Marseille Université, Centrale Marseille, 4 impasse Nikola TESLA CS 40006, F-13453, Marseille Cedex 13, France.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Macherey
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D019929:Cochlear Implantation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D006801:Humans; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test