Apps Help Hearing-Impaired Audience Understand Every Word
From: Medical Design Technology - 06/01/2015

The "Cinema Connect" and "MobileConnect" apps from Sennheiser Streaming
Technologies GmbH aim to ensure that soon, the hearing-impaired audience
members at a play or a movie are once again able to perceive and understand
every single word, even if they are wearing no hearing aid. This assisted
hearing technology is the brainchild of the researchers at the
Oldenburg-based Project Group Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology of the
Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT).

The basic principle of the Sennheiser technology is for a streaming server to
transmit audio signal from the stage or screen directly to the viewer’s
smartphone. The phone reproduces the data directly, via the headphones as
they are being loaded through the secured network. Alternatively, if the
viewer wears a hearing aid adapted to his or her smartphone, the app is also
able to send the sound signal to the hearing aid directly via Bluetooth
instead. “Our technology, which is integrated into the apps, does not just
enhance the sound volume, rather it lets the theater attendee individually
adjust the sound,” affirms Dr. Jan Rennies, Head of group at IDMT. Because
the range of optimal sound adjustments is narrow: loud noises swiftly appear
to be too loud, and therefore have to be reduced. By contrast, soft speech
components require substantially greater amplification. And depending on the
type of hearing loss, the affected individual is unable to perceive each
frequency with equal intensity: many people can still detect lower sounds
quite well, but when sound reaches a higher pitch, it gets difficult.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.mdtmag.com/news/2015/06/apps-help-hearing-impaired-audience-understand-every-word

Links:
Cinema Connect
http://en-de.sennheiser.com/sneak-preview-cinema-connect

MobileConnect
http://en-us.sennheiser.com/news-discover-new-worlds-with-mobileconnect

Jan Rennies
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jan_Rennies

Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology
http://www.idmt.fraunhofer.de/en.html