Electronic pass-through hearing protection and directional hearing restoration integrated in a helmet
conference paper
Compared to standard earplugs used for hearing protection, electronic pass-through earplugs provide better sound localisation, provided that the bandwidth is sufficiently wide and the earplugs do not change the shape of the pinnae. However, when in addition a helmet is worn that covers the ears, the directional hearing capability might be further diminished. We attempt to restore directional hearing when wearing a helmet by attaching a microphone array to the helmet. A pilot study has been performed to determine the inuence of electronic pass-through hearing protection and of helmets on sound localisation. Participants had to localise short sound bursts and perform a speech intelligibility test. The preliminary results showed that wearing helmets that covered the ears decreased the sound localisation performance significantly compared to when the ears were left free. However, the speech intelligibility increased. When participants wore active hearing protection instead of helmets the directional hearing capability decreased and the speech intelligibility remained equal.
TNO Identifier
470813
ISSN
22265147
Source title
7th European Conference on Noise Control 2008, EURONOISE 2008, 29 June - 4 July 2008, Paris, France
Pages
1209-1213
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