Hearing aid with histogram based sound environment classification

A hearing aid comprising:

• a microphone and an A/D converter for provision of a digital input signal in response to a sound signal received at the microphone in a sound environment;
• a processor that is configured to process the digital input signal in accordance with a signal processing algorithm to generate a processed output signal;
• a D/A converter and an output transducer for conversion of the processed output signal to an acoustic output signal;
• and
• a sound environment detector for determination of the sound environment based at least in part on the digital input signal, and for providing an output for selection of the signal processing algorithm, the sound environment detector including
• a feature extractor for determination of histogram values of the digital input signal in a plurality of frequency bands, and
• an environment classifier configured for receiving the histogram values as input, and classifying the sound environment by selecting one of a plurality of environmental classes based at least in part on the histogram values from at least two of the plurality of frequency bands;
• wherein the environment classifier is configured for classifying background noise in the sound environment using at least some of the histogram values.