Effect of spatial cue preservation using binaural beamforming on speech intelligibility in multi-talker scenarios

We conducted a study to examine the perceptual benefits of spatial cue preservation in binaural signals produced using binaural beamforming with microphone array signals. The focus of the study was to understand perceptual benefits in terms of speech intelligibility. In addition to the gain in Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) that traditional beamforming techniques offer, binaural beamforming techniques offer the added benefit of spatial cue preservation and the perceptual benefits that come with it. We evaluated speech intelligibility under unprocessed, monaural beamforming (beamforming with no spatial cue preservation) and binaural beamforming stimuli conditions in a group of participants with normal hearing using the Matrix sentence test, using is a speech-on-speech masking task. Our results indicated consistently higher speech intelligibility with spatial cue preservation achieved by binaural beamforming. We observed an approximately 3 dB decrease in Speech Reception Threshold (SRT) with preservation of spatial cues, consistent with previous findings.