Hearing loss (HL) simulators, which allow normal hearing (NH) listeners to experience HL, have been used in speech intelligibility experiments, but not in sound quality experiments due to perceptible distortion. If they produced less distortion, they might be useful for NH listeners to evaluate the sound quality of, for example, hearing aids. We conducted perceptual sound quality experiments to compare the Cambridge version of HL simulator (CamHLS) and the Wakayama version of the HL simulator (WHIS), which has the two algorithms of filterbank analysis synthesis (FBAS) and direct time-varying filter (DTVF). The experimental results showed that WHIS with DTVF produces less perceptible distortion in speech sounds than CamHLS and WHIS with FBAS, even when the nonlinear process is working. This advantage is mainly due to the use of the DTVF algorithm, which could be applied to various signal synthesis applications with filterbank analysis.

翻译：听力损失（HL）模拟器可使正常听力（NH）听者体验听力损失状态，此类设备已应用于语音可懂度实验，但由于存在可感知的失真，尚未用于音质实验。若能降低失真，HL模拟器或可帮助NH听者评估助听器等设备的音质。本研究通过感知音质实验，比较了剑桥版HL模拟器（CamHLS）与和歌山版HL模拟器（WHIS）的性能，后者包含滤波器组分析合成（FBAS）与直接时变滤波（DTVF）两种算法。实验结果表明，即使在非线性处理过程中，采用DTVF算法的WHIS在语音信号中产生的可感知失真也低于CamHLS及采用FBAS算法的WHIS。这一优势主要源于DTVF算法的应用，该算法可拓展至基于滤波器组分析的各种信号合成场景。