My psychophysics as a bilateral cochlear implant user

ENT surgeon who has bilateral CIs and has been in the research field for 20+ years. This sort of stuff is cool, but there are lots of limitations at the auditory nerve interface that limits improvements to speech and music processing strategies. Crazily enough, many of these studies were done in the 1960s to 1990s and are still valid today. There are strategies that can help at individual level, but do not help everyone. Thus they have not made it to clinical use.

Software like Voicemod transforms speaking voice into a bright, robotic, or Miku-inspired digital idol tone in real time. I wonder if this would help in hearing and understanding speech better.

Author here. I'm Korean, and I have cochlear implants in both ears, which I received in a clinical trial in 2025. No one could tell me what I actually hear, so between 11 October and 4 November 2026 I ran seven psychophysical tests on myself (10,992 trials), using browser test apps that Claude built for me. I'm an amateur, so there are surely mistakes, and corrections are very welcome.

All trial-level data, the analysis code and Lean 4 checks of the apps' logic are on GitHub (non-commercial licenses): https://github.com/mi-rae-lab/ci-psychophysics-data

I do not speak English. The page was translated with Claude, and I will use AI to read and answer replies, so my answers may be slow.

This is my first time visiting Hacker News, and my first post here. I don't know the culture here well yet, but I deeply respect it and support it.

It is past 1 a.m. here in Korea and I am very tired, so I need to get some sleep. I will check back around 9:30 a.m. Korean time (00:30 UTC).

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