The Comparative Performance of an Experimental Hearing Aid and Two Commercial Instruments

Abstract

An experimental hearing aid, two representative commercial models, and a high fidelity audio-amplification system were explored in a series of systematic articulation tests with hard-of-hearing subjects as listeners. The experimental hearing aid was designed to determine to what extent certain desirable design objectives could be incorporated in a portable hearing aid. A technical description of the experimental instrument is given in an appendix. The paper describes the experimental methods and testing equipment employed and summarizes the results in the form of articulation curves obtained from six hard-of-hearing listeners. The method adequately brings out performance differences in the four instruments and shows the superiority of the experimental hearing aid over the commercial instruments for most subjects.