Influence of microphone soiling on syllable recognition in cochlear implants: simulation and recognition in noise.

Background: The microphone is the first link of the sound processing chain and if there is dirt on the membrane or in the input port, the frequency response is modified.

Objective: The effect of microphone cleaning in cochlear implants (CI) was studied by measuring speech perception scores in the noise of CI users and of normal hearing (NH) subjects with a CI simulator.

Material And Methods: Sixty-one adult CI users and 20 NH were tested.