Effects of Delay in Hearing Assistive Technology

Wireless assistive listening systems can dramatically improve intelligibility in noisy environments, but they are cumbersome to use. Digital consumer devices, such as smartphones, could be more accessible and user-friendly, but they suffer from transmission delays that could be disturbing to listeners. Delay has been studied extensively for in-ear devices such as hearing aids, but not for remote microphone systems. This study aims to characterize the tolerable delay for wireless remote microphones both for both the user's own speech and for external sounds. This will provide valuable information for engineers designing next-generation assistive listening systems.