These awards support a student (who meets DfE residency requirements) for three years, with fees and (for those eligible) a stipend. There is information on the eligibility requirements for DfE awards, as well as information on the value of the award to the postgraduate research student, here: https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/department-economy-postgraduate-studentship-scheme. Please note that DfE studentships are open only to UK/EU students and if an EU candidate is successful they will receive a fees-only award. (If this excludes you but projects like this would be of interest to you, please make contact nonetheless.)

 

The primary role of a hearing aid is to restore audibility, amplifying the quietest sounds enough to be heard while avoiding making the loudest sounds uncomfortably or dangerously loud. Strategies have been evolved to enhance real-world sounds with less than a 10-millisecond delay while minimising the perceptual consequences of processing the sound so rapidly. However, much audio content is now consumed in a pre-recorded form, so more extensively pre-processed versions of it could be delivered by either headphones or Bluetooth hearing aids (Agus and Corrigan, 2018). In this context, there is far less pressure to process the sound quickly, which paves the way for many more strategies to counteract the many perceptual consequences of hearing losses. It is likely that preferences for adaptations will vary depending on audio content and individual preferences (Shirley et al., 2017), which may be partly explained by differences in the sound-track’s audio content and measurable differences in listeners’ hearing.

 

To take this work forward, we seek a doctoral researcher to develop, implement, and test strategies to improve the audibility of TV and film sound-tracks based on audiological principles. The project would combine computational signal-processing skills with psychological methods to explore the perceptions and preferences of listeners with a range of hearing losses. There is scope within the project to focus more on signal-processing strategies (for example to detect and accommodate the different dynamic ranges of TV and film soundtracks) or more on the psychoacoustical testing (for example to elucidate the perceptual basis of undesirable artefacts of the adapted audio).

 

The candidate will receive training for both signal processing and psychoacoustical tests at SARC. The project would be suited to someone with a background in engineering or acoustics or with a background in psychology or audiology and experience of (or willingness to learn) programming and signal processing.

 

Supervisors: Dr Trevor Agus (SARC) and Dr Matthew Rodger (Psychology)

 

Additional advisors: Prof Josh Reiss (C4DL, QMUL) and Chris Corrigan (SARC)