Historically hearing protection has been a tool to attenuate unwanted ambient noise and prevent noise-induced hearing loss, but often these devices negatively impact the perception of desirable sounds that are important for situational awareness and communication, detracting from their utility. Modern hearing protection devices (HPDs) aim to reduce unwanted noise, but also maintain (or even enhance) the perception of desirable sounds to varying degrees. Recently, we have proposed a set of electroacoustic metrics that correlate with psychoacoustic measures to quantify the performance of modern HPDs across dimensions beyond sound attenuation. This paper will investigate using electroacoustic metrics as inputs to algorithms to rank/select/optimize HPDs for domain-specific use cases. The requirements for HPD selection may vary considerably by use case, so users are allowed to subjectively weigh the importance of sound localization and speech communication while simultaneously specifying desired attenuation characteristics for unwanted continuous and/or impulsive noise. Development of the ranking algorithms, potential bias when comparing passive to electrical devices, and opportunities for expansion and improvement of the method will be discussed.
Lowe et al. (Wed,) studied this question.