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arXiv · 2610.17287

Active noise cancellation extends the benefit of AI speech enhancement in real hearing-aid recordings

Andrew T. Sabin·Linkai Li
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Abstract

Active noise cancellation (ANC) is common in headphones but rare in hearing aids, and its value for understanding speech in noise is not established. Algorithms that improve signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) act only on the hearing aid's amplified path, while unprocessed sound also reaches the eardrum directly through the vent, limiting the SNR improvement that is realized. Our earlier simulations predicted that attenuating this direct path with ANC would substantially increase the benefit of such processing. We tested that prediction in three hardware conditions: a standard receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aid, and an ANC-capable RIC with ANC off and on. Each was fit to NAL-NL2 targets for an N3 hearing loss and recorded on KEMAR with an AI speech-enhancement algorithm (AI-SE) off and on, in seven realistic scenes above 70 dB SPL. Speech and noise spectra were estimated from each recording with a binary time-frequency mask derived from the clean speech. AI-SE produced a similar peak benefit of about 4 dB in the high frequencies in all three conditions, but that benefit stayed at or above 1 dB only above 1500, 600, and 130 Hz for the standard RIC, ANC RIC (ANC off), and ANC RIC (ANC on), respectively, closely tracking the measured attenuation of the direct path. With AI-SE on, ANC RIC (ANC on) improved SII-weighted SNR by 5.1 dB relative to the open ear, compared with 3.3 dB for ANC RIC (ANC off) and 1.6 dB for the standard RIC. With AI-SE off, enabling ANC added only 0.2 dB. ANC is therefore an enabling technology: on its own it added little, but by attenuating the direct path it allowed SNR-enhancing processing to deliver substantially greater benefit at the eardrum, extending that benefit to much lower frequencies.

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BibTeXRIS

Andrew T. Sabin, Linkai Li. 2026-10-12. Active noise cancellation extends the benefit of AI speech enhancement in real hearing-aid recordings. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17287

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