Wind Noise Sound Quality Preference and Claims Study

Claims evidence is required for a new Wind Noise Canceller (WNC) algorithm.

Wind noise is not sound in the classic sense, as it does not correspond to pressure waves moving through the air. However, because the microphone membranes are deflected by the wind noise, the microphones translates them into a sound signal. Since the pressure fluctuations are small in size, this wind noise signal is uncorrelated between the two HI microphones (correlation decreases with increasing microphone distance), creating bothersome sounds at low and very low frequencies. Historically, wind noise cancellers have been applied to make wind noise less bothersome. However, target signal (i.e. speech) sound fidelity can become compromised as a biproduct. Therefore, an updated wind noise canceller has been proposed to improve wind noise attenuation and target signal fidelity compared to the previous iteration. Informal exploratory testing by normal hearing Sonova employees have identified the new wind noise canceller iteration to improve sound quality ratings with some dependencies on (1) wind speed, (2) wind angle and (3) target signal. Therefore, this study will aim to produce sound quality data showing a benefit for the new wind noise canceller compared to the older version for the purpose of claim substantiation.