ForwardFocus with cochlear implant recipients in spatially separated and fluctuating competing signals - introduction of a reference metric.

To clinically evaluate ForwardFocus in noise with experienced Nucleus cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Listening performance with ForwardFocus was compared against the best in class directional microphone program (BEAM). Speech comprehension was tested with the Oldenburg sentence test with competing signals (stationary, three, six and 18-talker babble) in both co-located and spatially-separated listening environments. Additionally, normal hearing participants were tested monaurally in the same listening environments as a reference and to promote cross-study comparisons between CI clinical study outcomes. Post-lingually deaf adult CI recipients ( = 20) who were experienced users of the Nucleus sound processor (Cochlear Limited). Improved speech comprehension was found with the ForwardFocus program compared to the BEAM program in a co-located frontal listening environment for both stationary and fluctuating competing signals. In spatially-separated environments ForwardFocus provided significant speech reception threshold (SRT) improvements of 5.8 dB for three-talker competing signals, respectively. ForwardFocus was shown to significantly improve speech comprehension in a wide range of listening environments. This technology is likely to provide significant improvements in real-world listening for CI recipients, given the clinically relevant performance outcomes in challenging dynamic noise environments, bringing their performance closer to their normal hearing peers.