Auditory communication devices and related methods are described herein. An example auditory communication device can include a microphone configured to collect acoustic energy and convert the collected acoustic energy into an audio signal, a processor operably coupled to the microphone, and a memory operably coupled to the processor. The processor can be configured to receive the audio signal from the microphone, create a time-frequency (T-F) representation of the audio signal, classify each of a plurality of T-F units into one of N discrete categories, and attenuate the T-F representation of the audio signal. A respective level of attenuation for each of the T-F units is determined by its respective classification. The processor can be further configured to create a synthesized signal from the attenuated T-F representation of the audio signal.