1. A device, comprising: a processor; a memory, wherein the memory includes: a noise spectral estimator to calculate noise spectral estimates from a sampled environmental noise; a speech spectral estimator to calculate speech spectral estimates from a input speech; a formant signal to noise ratio (SNR) estimator to calculate SNR estimates using the noise spectral estimates and speech spectral estimates within each formant detected in the input speech; and a formant boost estimator to calculate and apply a set of gain factors to each frequency component of the input speech such that the resulting SNR within each formant reaches a pre-selected target value.