“Tf HAVE THINGS IN MY EARS = HOW THE HECK do THEY worK>”™ 7 A COMIC ABOUT HEARING AIDS FOR MY SIX YEAR-OLD SELF WITH LOVE FROM 29-YEAR-OLD ENGINEERING PHD STUDENT ME —> by Mel Chua - cc-s7 2015 please don't let mom and dad catch you with Hak screwdriver, When | was b, \ got in touble for disassembling my hearing aids with an eyeglass screwdriver, Mind you, | Never wanted te STi rye . 2 ¥ waa Se ee \ grew up to be an engineer electrical £ compute?) with a builk- in auditory lows pass filter. CTeanslation: t'm deaf. ) The picture on the right is called an audiogram, and it (sort of) shone what | can hear. Son Tere SAY MAKES NOISE, AND 1 SEUEVE THEM This axis shows how much louder Soveds have 4o be fr me 40 hhear then, compared *2 4 “normal” hearing pevon. 12088 ty OW OW JET Engine OW ave ve bere) Go See piste tec, Sis elon ae frequency (He) mp This ante Shows the Frequencies | ean heer = Jow avtes igh notes > Cpiane Keyboard pane MIDDLE C fobviously not ven 5 cas (201.6 He) to scale) You can think of the audiogram | Lely of 1 OCTAVE Agove Uke @ giant eqvaliter, ‘bass: MIDDLE C (623.3)Drums don't have Sometimes, babies will Fie alacms make @ Faint, barely delectable, and nok hi-hats or cymbals open Weir raouths for (as far as 1 can dell), + long Hime, and all | Bass deums make a Me Neaving people ill fervibly unpleasant | noise, though. Stat Plincking ee | (Bass/ kick) W's amusing. It also means that things like water (and the “t" sound) often feel like figments of the rest of the world's imagination. Ws not a terrible hardship or anything. | dov'+ feel broken. I'm just curious. jest curiow So lets stat with a dissection of my EARHook MICROPHONEFirst of all, heaving aids look very different from the outside. Ce (es: ‘COMPLETELY mw WE HAE Ste IN CANAL cana BEHIND THE EAR Cote) cate) Hs) Gre) They come in all serts of form factors depending on the type of amplitication you manly hort jon want +o be able + conte! it, whether you Want +40 heok it vu te your cell phone, ete. Generally speaking, louder and mere featvre- full hearing aids are bigger. This is mine. H's what really loud hearing aids look like. Secondly, aad more important fo my exginecring well, the picture on the eudside doesn't say much abord ihat happens % the inside, This is a better picture. “mee. {sce Ree Virmree AC This is called a beck diagram, It explains tre funchonal subcomponents of | the hearing aid iia terms of hew jt converts sounds cant hear info sounds | Csemetimes) can. Youll notice seme obvious Vatags ave missing. wo button, i: That's because this diagram a battens re © : oe ines 2 is all about intormapen K pai S ie Farrery! inTeReAces! iiuare aeSound start3 out as ad aaaleg signal, S kinda like how Gnd needs te be Converted tea digital one digital picture... Se that Computers can understand it. | 2 ote oi Unsueg singly, the component at dacs ti is called the.. sare made of pixels. eeccoee- pe) Crus |e" Apc |e (ky | have input? ad Ka ge get it digiticee! Chek ist hing) saa | gr ee) rae [wchrand it has body gvards| and it has [wchrand it has body gvards| | Grecognize these guys from the block diagram on p-3?) | A The fist problem is That the mic is so tiny, its signal is 5° soft and hard +e hear, $0 we Send them Thrmigh a preanp boost them op. [Then the ton bodyguard blocks check for.. Are your Frequencies ceo low or +20 high? att AUSSo now we have this. Mic aS PREAMP er 4 ww eh || DIGITAL ea, || SIGNAL PROCESSOR' The DSP, of Di ignal Processor, is the brains of the aid H's basically a really, really small computer. going se the whele place rocks out together. Not all hear In fact, they all used 4o be @ ot G ) The SleCk Nv keeps a beat af Z es) aids are digital’. Analog- ne computer involved, just of small electrical components. And the memory stores mings Wee Pre progeam, settings. lookup tables... any thi the system Needs to remember. The gore is where all the mixi Processing happens. and There are some real arguments for analog aids. And arguably, digital aids benefit fom Hae ~ placebo effect. |But there are still a lot of advantages My First hearing aids te digital hearing aids over analeg ones. ae were analog. 9 over analog ones. Keay) DIGITAL Roe ye 8 of hy — Fs ~ SMALLER! ~ LOWER power! = Connect To Your PHONE, commurer, Ete! Sea You didn't just disassemble then, ae ee + SIGNAL SHAPING! a Gar) OL ~ ADAPTABLE serTIngs | ao Get) x Ase ~ REPROPUCIBLE AND * “ & COMPARABLE! fe + you “programmed” Because of this, most modern- day hearing aids them with one, by are digital, so that's what we'le going “o feus on twisting small potentiometers on the back. Back in Club DSP, the place where eveythi Our DS, the Core (processor), has a lot oF ing happens... Bs We got te keep up) <— No matter what, 5 Pup she's Ahinkiag about this. < FREQUENCY RESPONSE > CEELeee how low/high a sound cat yeu near, and hew smooth is it 4 in between? D Signal level D Tw INGE mieasear et ia nomunene, S313 Y Géests at least gous) B DEBUG HY — 0 accvsstely ae eie> of can you hear loud and the frequencies a aae and +l the the “reat” sound map difference between them? to the frequencies of the “precesnea” enc? aeeaat PROCESSING DELAY INTERNAL NOISE > how long does it take fr sound Tena’ aga Comini mize, please) Ao get through the syst mosHy +nis comes Cs it enough > 19-3em3 ~ that from he microphone; on can notice it slipping? ) adding signal that PRT wasn “really there” OO NERSevensthing’s a trad microphones Similarly, the core might be trying te do Nvise reduction... but reducing noite is a (nonlinear) signal distortion. Lets tale about noise reduction fer a bit, First, definitions. NOISE+ meaas backgrovad noise, things SIGNAL! is the part we do want we dont want te hear. Fer the te hear, Im this case, ve Purposes of this section, it vsvally anume is speech, means nef speech. “There are some obviovs Ii mitatens do Hhis approach. Py Q: ~Q [\ & a For these sitvatiens, neise reduction doesnt work 50 well, For instance, vnusic isn't Also, we might not want speech, but we de want to near al) the speech te hear ite all the me, We care about +ne relative levels of these ~ the signal-te-nsise rate, or CNR,a To de this, the core needs fo gure out wha’ oe and whats Pile, cele She sorts this eat o by channel - findia perv Be Sam fr a book Secs : ee of frequencies at Sy BRENT. DCD fa Ep ‘agonan) | HIGH Lew wig] | Sours a“ Channel channel chawnel chanel channel 1 34 5 Geehnically, the channels can overlaps ML any given p in Hime, each ch2nnel has a certain cate * SIGNAL ot that makes iF really herd te draw.) alla aloo [pom vn nl Now, we Knew a lob about the sounds of speech. How fast they are. How leud they should be, and at what frequencies (and thus what channels they should show up in.) So if Hae SNR for q specie channel crosses a thetaheld ak some point, the con's alyerithan dells it us Ew, noise’ 1 Dump it or muting the Velume on that chanel for a a I @ little while, — BW Wet There are Still many design decisions fe make, Such ase Aap .. How steeply and cagidly S May + Should it fur the ™~ 1 volume down? Eno soon te 4 Glarmening on foFE ages tells BS Sounds aa, hew wand it does + which means turning dewa Hoot long does iF wait? Hod shacply Neen gradval is the fade?) dacs it bring Yee if nokices noite, volume back on how long should agaat it wait Zhe a's foo fast, it may This happens constantly od ett How far dowa does it for every frequent) sou, iF missed umn the volume? channel,gm) Yoo nnn the noise from gait here in the Rok place. Thai's why (DIRECTIONAL. MicRoPHoNES! =i cas Basicalh, every micephone has a ditterent cardieid pattern it listens “more in seme directions than othes, People do this too. Vue ae tern? j oT 50 Peery , “mee DS. mee | a A] [WE we add the cardiotd patterns of muttigle microphones, we can make therm | Supplement each other or cancel each other out in certain places, and end up with a virtual SUFERMIC! through He power of Raa N L/S svt ILS Soe Spale "sensi 92 a UA ibe\\y Nabe S. TVVANS ‘The core can play the role of conductor /director, using delays and modulation to ‘steer the bea formed by multiple mics, This is called adaphve directienatitg, She can alse make decisions about ditect onalit : ee without user intervention; this is automate Airtctonality, (A hearing aid might have directionality that is neither, both, or one but not the Her.) 15 THE Pou PATTERN ADTUSTABLE? en - y= i's fined Glurn yowr head)| ws adjuttable This sounds grest, but BET you can turn a YOu tay ell the mic | personally alse wont ¥§ 38 Wrecttonal mie which direction, +o snanval overrides for Be Ha Na eee Test in evenp thing. 23 El a directional aie the. micophones [FE Figs Teel an Senet rn BE gk fig Heel ont ‘onich direc A, jl ae ae Mh ten hs Any jlto It can get ever more complex- you can oe multiband directional i where the cone computes a ditterent directionality pattern tor each Prequencg chamel- Lets cee thereh a lobof high-frequency wind noise, so I sch Haat channel +8 be very narrendy frtuseds on whatt in font of 05. hundeeds of inion oF computations /dedsions Om) sueeud te fue 4hiy and divechanality is ely one smail Piee of what she deals with. (eo BOE (Just another ya wirt | @ Pewee The core is abe ting 2 lvanited 7S to radera computers 20K Phonak. heading cid chinse yee No wid- Freqvenoy noise? Aweseme- Perfect... The core iy makin at ew Evy what's Ahad Loo tvging on the left? Cut the bass From there and patch it over from the right. fer another Few milli seconds. urt0 Bc Bott Intel we TAT chigae b euNow that we have a signal with (we hope) some noise removed, the next thing we should do is make it louder... and that should be easy, right ? ‘whoa whoa whoa! Tom up ALL THE Mel, remember your NOLUME!! audiogram on p.1? Reed to make fheze louder = Cdoesn everyone talk to Heir hearing ald's core processor as a cartoon character?) Then that’s easy- if it's about the gap between wy hearing and “normal” heaving, all we have to de is make that Frequency louder by that decibel (48) amount. People with hearing lors sil lave the same threshold for lovdness pain tolerance as Perple with “normal” hearing. IF we simply ven up the volume, any sound that's more thon “soft becemes unbearably, loud. high notes © x aay IN That's why i'm looking at \ cochlear ienplonts, by the wat»let's assume we've done lail the signal processing that would be use fal MEMog Y_ ig . [=I where does the signal go fom =a here? III : hey, #5 wall i¥'s ghW digifatn andieg ‘again! Pot it needs te beceme 6 FRRO Fo the changing room! but why is it well, when a all... strange? al the shi © (hee) SR corners and edges, especially ee for lower- fesludion samplings turn into jitter. (low-pass) f | signal gets converted to an an ones edges and eseaess of the Sleps 2h Bin FILTER and we let the Waiter (not exactly the same ii 3 its @ cousin 40 the fest) Once The livailer decides its not too bud for the recchver] Cor makes it se), the Signal hits the reeriverssRECEIVER AR | psp: Eed—-@ NZI RECONSTRUCTIVE SSNS Filter, e wnect to other i