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Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#51

Post by rasur »

sdrothrock wrote: post #20
rasur wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I do wonder about, in this context. I don't have a CI myself, but my 6 year old son does, and I am somewhat concerned that he is-or-might be experiencing partial sound "blindness" (meaning: sure speech processing is adequate but there are surely some things that are processed away). I have a fair amount of experience in music/sound-recording environments and it makes me somewhat sad for him that he'…

Long term; I have progressive sensorineural hearing loss that was noticed when I was about two and had reached "profound" levels by the time I was about ten. Implanted in my left ear at 16. I actually made the decision to be a part of the normal public school system and never learned sign language, partially out of stubbornness, so I can't really help with SL-related questions, though I'd be more than glad to answer…

Thanks for the offer, but actually have access to plenty of CI-wearers (son at deaf school, lots have CIs.. go figure ;) )

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#52

Post by gwern »

taliesinb wrote: post #49
gwern wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latency and power issues can probably be fixed, assuming a good end-to-end model, by using model distillation into a wide shallow net using low-precision or even binary operations. I don't know if that would be enough - we've seen multiple order of magnitude decreases in compute requirements (think about style transfer going from hours on top-end Titan GPUs to realtime on mobile phones) but the usual target is mo…

Not to detract from your larger point but AFAIK the style transfer thing is different. If you're willing to hardcode the style into the net you can go realtime, but the original style transfer paper is able to do different styles without retraining. So they're different algorithms. Unless the SOTA has changed recently.

You shouldn't need to hardcode the style if you provide the style as an additional datapoint for it to condition on. But this doesn't really matter since for fun mobile applications it's fine to pick from 20 or 50 pretrained styles, and likewise for hearing aids.

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#53

Post by Kluny »

sdrothrock wrote: post #47
Kluny wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's exactly the thing I'm talking about. You'd think they could hire one deaf person at their labs to road test the things, but... On my hearing aid it's a "feature" that can be turned off. Too bad you're stuck with it.

I have had so many problems with the implant in general that are just brushed off as "well, you're unusual." It won't even stay on my head without me putting a few extra magnets on the headpiece.

Weird, it sounds defective. Have they tried replacing the unit?

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#54

Post by qu23jvp6 »

sdrothrock wrote: post #4
csours wrote: post #2

Tech starts 1/3 the way down the article (ctrl+f "clean speech") > My lab was the first, in 2001, to design such a filter, which labels sound streams as dominated by either speech or noise. With this filter, we would later develop a machine-learning program that separates speech from other sounds based on a few distinguishing features, such as amplitude (loudness), harmonic structure (the particular arrangement of to…

As someone with a cochlear implant who lives with the consequences of overly clever programmers who thought they'd "help" by filtering out noise and volume and whatever else... I really wish they wouldn't. This is a technology that makes me so angry some days that I sometimes wonder if it was worth getting implanted, even though I know it was.

> overly clever programmers who thought they'd "help" by filtering out noise and volume and whatever else

I used to work at a CI manufacturer. Just thought you should know that this isn't what happens: all the features are developed by researchers or experts before even getting to the engineers, and go through clinical trials (usually several) to prove their effectiveness. They don't, and can't, add new sound processing on a whim to be 'clever'.

If the sound processing on your device is making you frustrated you should definitely discuss it with your audiologist. A lot of features can be configured or disabled completely.

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#55

Post by austinjp »

Smaug123 wrote: post #15
austinjp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also qualia and the knowledge argument: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

Though I don't understand why it's in principle impossible for Mary to deduce what colour feels like to a standard human. Just because humans are not smart enough to model a being's internal state completely, given just the total physical information, doesn't mean it's impossible.

Mary supposedly illustrates the difference between knowing (or modelling) and experiencing.

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#56

Post by epalmer »

brothercolor wrote: post #44
epalmer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hearing aids have changed my quality of life (at age 40). I've had mine for 6 months. I'm 63 now. They have changed my life as well. I still have some tinniness but the tech has been adjusting the curve and other factors each time I visit her and this last time a few weeks ago the sound quality got much better. There are still places where they don't work or get overwhelmed by background noise, like at a live baskeb…

The deeply robust elder Deaf community itself is proof that the brain tissue loss described in the article is probably not due to the hearing loss itself. I have never heard of a culturally Deaf individual experiencing this kind of degeneration of the brain. If I had to hazard a hypothesis it would be on the social end of things, such as social isolation causing decreased function, similar to to the social contexts t…

>It is immeasurably tragic in many ways that this phenomenon is being used to sell hearing aids and more anxiety.

I think it is plausible that areas of the brain that are used for processing sound atrophy when used less. I'm not experienced with the deaf community so can't comment on that aspect of your comment.

I came upon the article on my own. The article was not used to sell me hearing aids. But it helped me get over the stigma of having hearing aids. So for that I am grateful for having read the article and having it help my motivation. Having hearing aids for 6 months now have been valuable beyond description.

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#57

Post by sdrothrock »

Kluny wrote: post #53
sdrothrock wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had so many problems with the implant in general that are just brushed off as "well, you're unusual." It won't even stay on my head without me putting a few extra magnets on the headpiece.

Weird, it sounds defective. Have they tried replacing the unit?

I'm on my 4th or 5th BTE now (since 2002), so... yeah. :)

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#58

Post by Kluny »

sdrothrock wrote: post #57
Kluny wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, it sounds defective. Have they tried replacing the unit?

I'm on my 4th or 5th BTE now (since 2002), so... yeah. :)

That definitely sucks. Thanks for the headsup not to get one of those though!

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#59

Post by brothercolor »

epalmer wrote: post #56
brothercolor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deeply robust elder Deaf community itself is proof that the brain tissue loss described in the article is probably not due to the hearing loss itself. I have never heard of a culturally Deaf individual experiencing this kind of degeneration of the brain. If I had to hazard a hypothesis it would be on the social end of things, such as social isolation causing decreased function, similar to to the social contexts t…

>It is immeasurably tragic in many ways that this phenomenon is being used to sell hearing aids and more anxiety. I think it is plausible that areas of the brain that are used for processing sound atrophy when used less. I'm not experienced with the deaf community so can't comment on that aspect of your comment. I came upon the article on my own. The article was not used to sell me hearing aids. But it helped me get…

Good point, maybe its the sound processing areas. A greater question is whether areas of the brain atrophy at all due to less stimuli coming through a specific organ.

All evidence I've seen point to brain plasticity; that areas used for specific things get re-mapped to other similar functions. For example, Deaf individuals experience a strong inner voice that activates similar centers in the brain as actual voices.

Re: Deep Learning enables hearing aid wearers to pick out a voice in a crowded room

#60

Post by sdrothrock »

qu23jvp6 wrote: post #54
sdrothrock wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a cochlear implant who lives with the consequences of overly clever programmers who thought they'd "help" by filtering out noise and volume and whatever else... I really wish they wouldn't. This is a technology that makes me so angry some days that I sometimes wonder if it was worth getting implanted, even though I know it was.

> overly clever programmers who thought they'd "help" by filtering out noise and volume and whatever else I used to work at a CI manufacturer. Just thought you should know that this isn't what happens: all the features are developed by researchers or experts before even getting to the engineers, and go through clinical trials (usually several) to prove their effectiveness. They don't, and can't, add new sound process…

> I used to work at a CI manufacturer. Just thought you should know that this isn't what happens

I didn't actually think it was; it's just a bit of annoyed snark because this has severely impacted my QOL for a decade. :)

> If the sound processing on your device is making you frustrated you should definitely discuss it with your audiologist. A lot of features can be configured or disabled completely.

Tried it several times; she was unconvinced that it was actually affecting me. Got a new audiologist; she was convinced that the setting couldn't be changed. Moved to Japan, got a new audiologist: convinced that I'm imagining it and doesn't think the setting can be changed anyway.

I hear that a long time ago, people used to be able to buy the adapters to program their processors themselves.

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