Results of the second “clarity” enhancement challenge for hearing devices

The clarity enhancement challenges (CECs) seek to facilitate development of novel processing techniques for improving the intelligibility of speech in noise for hearing-aid users through a series of signal-processing challenges. Each challenge provides entrants with a set of stimuli for development and testing of their algorithms. The performance of the algorithms is assessed using objective measures of speech intelligibility and subjective measures conducted with a panel of hearing-impaired listeners. CEC2 featured more complex listening environments than CEC1 with multiple interfering sound sources (speech, music, household appliance sounds) within a simulated living-room environment at signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) from −12 to + 4 dB. In addition, head rotation towards the target speech was introduced. Target speech came from a new dataset of 10,000 different English sentences spoken by 40 actors speaking 250 sentences each (Graetzer S et al., 2022 Data in Brief 41, 107961). The objective assessment was provided by HASPI (Kates & Arehart, 2021 Speech Comm 131, 35–46). All 18 entries achieved substantial improvements in HASPI, averaging 0.55 across all systems and SNRs. Improvements were greatest (averaging 0.61) for SNRs between −8 and 0 dB. The best-performing system achieved HASPI scores above 0.9 for all SNRs. Listening-test data will be reported.