Artikel
Evaluation of the Harmony soundprocessor in combination with the speech coding strategy HiRes120
Suche in Medline nach
Autoren
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Martina Brendel
- Medical University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany
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Beate Krueger
- Medical University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany
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Carolin Frohne-Buechner
- Advanced Bionics GmbH, Hannover, Germany
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Andreas Buechner
- Medical University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany
| Veröffentlicht: | 8. August 2007 |
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Gliederung
Text
To date, speech coding strategies have utilized a fixed number of stimulation sites, equivalent to the number of physical electrode contacts. Because of independent current sources the Advanced Bionics HiRes system offers the possibility to stimulate two adjacent electrode contacts simultanously to create intermediate pitch percepts. The speech coding strategy HiRes120, based on this current steering technique, runs on the new ear level processor Harmony.
Eleven adults participated in our five months study, where the impact of HiRes120 and the Harmony were evaluated. The test battery consists of HSM sentence tests in different conditions, questionnaires concerning speech understanding, quality of music, battery life time and handling of the processor. The participants used the CII or HiRes90K implant system, had a mean age of 58.1 years (38.2 to 79.3 years) and a mean duration of deafness of 5.1 years (0 to 25.3 years).
In comparison to the own processor with HiRes an increase of 10 % for the HSM sentence test with a competing talker could be found. The extended battery life time averaged 14 hours, i.e. an increase of 100 %. The subjective evaluation of the general questionnaire showed positive rating in every particular.
82 % of the study participants had a clear preference for the new Harmony soundprocessor. They could be separated in 64 % who preferred HiRes120 and 18 % who preferred HiRes.
The majority of the subjects would like to change to the new Harmony soundprocessor.
