Can someone explain the difference between a Speech Mapping Test and a Real Ear Measurement Test? The local audi is advocating for the speech mapping test rather than the real ear measurement test. He seems to think it allows for better adjustments. Thanks in advance for responding.
Here’s something I found online.
Speech mapping is a REM technique that uses an inverted (dB SPL (power)) version of the widely accepted ’speech Banana’ as a target.
The actual definition of speech mapping is ‘REAR-speech mapping’ - which stands for Real Ear Aided Response. This gives a good indication of the overall function of your hearing aid in situ, in the presence of speech.
So, in summary they are both REM, but speech mapping is the one you want as it’s likely to give you a good tuning result.
MASSIVE CAVEAT; despite being fitted to target you might not ‘like’ the settings as blindly using REAR without taking account of your personal loudness preferences can be fraught with issues. Also if the average environmental/ambient sound where the measurement is presented differs from the ‘real world’ listening environment, the actual functional gain produced by the clever AI system can/will differ. Your audiologist’s office can’t easily emulate a pub experience for example.
2 Likes
Honestly, I use REM as an umbrella term but am generally referring to speech mapping. What do you think this clinician was considering REM that was NOT including speech mapping?
Could have meant just target matching using another stimulus rather than speech matching.
I can’t see why you’d use an ‘older’ method but some people still think you can fit AI speech trained Aids with garbled noise sources and no loudness growth information.
1 Like
The two things I’ve heard of called REM are 1) something involving a carrot and 2)lots of foreign sounding words Can somebody confirm if one or both of those are “Speech Mapping?”
Yes that would be considered speech mapping. When I first started using Real Ear (back in the 80’s) we just had a warble tone the went from around 200 - 8000 Hz. It was matched to a target gain. With today’s instruments, the speech mapping is much more accurate.
1 Like
Thank you to all who replied. The audiologist whom I will see in late April indicated that he prefers to use speech mapping. He thinks it is better for the patient in the long run. Lots of folks on here recommend real ear measurement, so I got a bit nervous about it. I feel much better going the speech mapping route now. Again thanks everyone.