SPEECH ENHANCEMENT WITH ACTIVE MASKING CONTROL

Disclosed is a speech intelligibility enhancing system comprising at least one in-ear headphone device arranged with an ear canal facing portion and an environment facing portion. The device comprises an acoustic path comprising a vent, the acoustic path coupling the environment facing portion with the ear canal facing portion, and an electroacoustic path comprising a microphone at the environment facing portion, a filter and a loudspeaker at the ear canal facing portion. The acoustic path is arranged to convey acoustic sound in a vowel dominated frequency range, and the electroacoustic path is arranged to acoustically reproduce sound signals in a consonant dominated frequency range and in the vowel dominated frequency range, and the electroacoustic path is arranged such that a signal-to-masking ratio is improved by said electroacoustic path compensating contributions from said acoustic path in said vowel dominated frequency range. A method for enhancing speech intelligibility is furthermore disclosed.