System and method employing smart speaker selection for hearing enhancement

A method of training a first neural network for use in a hearing system, the method comprising:

• providing one or more audio input devices within a region in which are positioned a plurality of sound sources;
• receiving input signals at the one or more audio input devices, the input signals including undershot angle data as described elsewhere herein;
• providing either the input signals, or intermediate signals based upon the input signals, to the first neural network;
• generating by the first neural network a plurality of output signals;
• processing the output signals, along with desired speaker clean speech data determined at least in part based upon the undershot angle data, at a loss processing block, to determine a plurality of weight signals;
• and
• updating the first neural network based upon the weight signals.

A method of operating, during an inference mode, a hearing system including one or more memory devices configured to store a first neural network, the method comprising:

• receiving audio input signals at one or more audio input devices, the audio input signals including audio information arising from a plurality of sound sources;
• operating one or more processing devices in accordance with the first neural network to generate intermediate output signals that, to a higher degree than in the audio information, reflect or emphasize at least one desired sound source component of the audio information arising from a desired one of the sound sources of the plurality of sound sources determined to be the desired one of the sound sources at least indirectly based upon a first undershot angle evident from the audio information;
• and
• generating, at one or more audio output devices, audio output signals based at least indirectly upon the intermediate output signals.