Beschreibung:
<jats:p>Binaural speech-reception thresholds (SRT) in noise for both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners were determined (1) using earphone presentation of stimuli simulating a free-field environment with between one and six noise sources, and (2) in a reverberant environment with the listener in either the direct or indirect field of the speech and/or noise source. The masking noise was either steady state, or modulated like running speech. It was found that normal-hearing listeners benefit considerably from both masker fluctuations and interaural level differences due to headshadow: Both cues caused an advantage of up to 7 dB in terms of SRT. Much smaller gains were attained by most hearing impaired listeners. The gains also diminished when reverberation was present, or when the number of maskers was increased. Results further showed that in almost all conditions where interaural time or phase differences were present, the release from masking experienced by both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners was in the order of 2–3 dB.</jats:p>