What you described here sounds like an audiogram test. Normally they put you in a soundproof booth with headphones on to allow you to detect the faintest tones at thresholds where you can register detection. It’s not really useless and actually is pretty fundamental because it forms the basis of your hearing loss. It also consists of loud tones test as well to see the level of loudness that your hearing can tolerate.
Then of course, beside the audiogram test, there’s also the Word Recognition Test that we talk about earlier. But usually the WRT is good to do just to know what your WRS (Word Recognition Score) is, but it’s not necessary to have in order to prescribe a hearing aid for you. Only the audiogram result is needed to prescribe the hearing aids.
If by a “real” test, you mean having an audiogram done in a soundproof booth with headphones on as opposed to sitting in a normal office room with a computer beeping tones at you, then yes, it’s better to do it in a booth do isolate other noises that can affect your threshold hearing detection level. But either way, it’s an audiogram test (either refined in a booth or crude in a room) and that’s really all that’s needed to prescribe hearing aids for people.
Of course there are also REM tests and maybe speech in noise tests and WRT again after the hearing aids are prescribed and worn to measure the effectiveness of the HAs, but starting out with an audiogram is always the first test. Doing it via a computer in an office may be a bit more crude than in a soundproof booth, but it’s not quackery.
I have had them all. The REM in my case basically test to see is the aids and ear molds can accomplish the needed level of output. To use REM as the basis of setting my aids up to the audiogram is only the starting point. When my aids were set only as the results of the audiogram, I could hear sounds but couldn’t for the life of me understand speech. Also, after my aids are set so I understand speech if you look at the graph it doesn’t look much like the audiogram or the REM. I don’t fully understand the reason why and personally I only care about the fact that after my audiologist magic in the Gene2 software I can not only hear birds, music, the most important thing is I understand speech over 90% of the time. I have read through my VA records at the explanation of my fitting and it reads like a foreign language.
It’s a step by step build up process. First and foremost, you need the audiogram. Without it, you don’t even know how to prescribe anything properly. Then you need REM to verify and if necessary, adjust the performance of the HAs to optimal level. Then the fine tuning by your HCP can improve it further for speech or music or what-have-you.
I’m just saying that you can’t simply dismiss the audiogram test (using the tones) as being ridiculous and useless, and that anybody who starts out only administering an audiogram test (whether crudely or properly) is a quack. Without the audiogram to begin with, you can’t move on to REM and then more fine tuning. The audiogram is the very first, fundamental, and necessary test before anything else. It’s usually enough to start prescribing hearing aids with just the audiogram, although also knowing the WRS result also helps in finding more appropriate aids. Other tests are subsequential to the audiogram.
Just because an HCP starts out doing just an audiogram then prescribes hearing aids to patients doesn’t mean that they’re a quack and we can’t assume that they won’t do any other tests subsequentially.
You can set the test up is various ways, but you’re essentially calculating the users signal to noise ratio. You can then match it to any given hearing aids directivity index for an approximation of how suitable that device is in providing the necessary support in noise. The background noise in the QSiN is literally other voices, so it’s as close to the real scenario as you could emulate in a clinical environment.
Thanks for sharing! Now that’s what I’m talking about. This should be THE test that every HCP should administer to their patients after they’ve been fitted with hearing aids!
In my years of getting several pairs of hearing aids from Costco and independent HCPs for probably a span of 30 years, NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY ever gave me such a test. Even the latest HCP from whom I purchased my OPN 1 a few years back. You know what she and the Costco HIS’s did to give me a sound “test”? They crumpled a piece of paper or shuffle pieces of paper back and forth then asked me “How does that sound to you after I’ve made my adjustment?” I mean, sheesh, right, sure, that helps a lot! Such a professional test!!!
The best some Costco HIS’s could do is “Why don’t you just go walk around inside Costco and see how different my adjustments make?”
Thank you for your professional advice on this - In my entire life I have never had or heard of QSiN and the video on your last post just shows it. I will surely ask my audiologist if they can cater for this kind of test.
My mother is currently in Taiwan and she does not speak chinese unfortunately so the only test she’s had was an audiogram test. She will yet to be given a full proper test when she comes back to our homeland, and I will definitely request this type of test for her. She will need to be able to distinguish speech from noise in noisy area as she’s a teacher and lecturer. I do hope the More3’s will be suited to her hearing type.
In my case, I have a more severe hearing loss and will need More1’s . I am currently wearing Oticon Chilli SP7 - for more than 10 years. (I am sure the technology level of More3’s are more advanced than the SP7’s , if that is the case , it will be no brainer the More3’s should do the honours of helping her).
I agree! In nearly 40 years of HA use, I have never had a test like that. The VA concept of speech in noise is “Say the word ‘PLAY’” at 80db with a white noise mask of around 60db. The QSiN should be SOP for all hearing tests.
I disagree. Testing with individual words rely on what you actually hear. A phrase or sentence also relies on how well your brain can fill in the missing word(s). To me the individual words would be a more accurate representation of what you actually hear rather than how well your brain fills in the missing bits. jmo
I definitely agree with you, I use to spend a lot of time that delayed my response to question just filling in the gaps in the sentence or questions. I have to say with my More1 aids I respond to those questions much faster and more accurate.
It doesn’t matter - the noises from one or two small transducers in an office are a far cry from multiple noise sources moving a LOT of air in different vectors with different room acoustics, sympathetic vibrations, delays, and overtones, such as are present in a big, live room. All on top of a puny human voice …
This recorded test is just marketing hype, IMO. YMMV… [Having a BIG transducer array like they have in the Oticon lab is another story.]
Agree to disagree then. Simply because single words in a noisy place is not realistic. We’re not testing what we actually hear in a vacuum. That’s what the original Word Recognition Test in a quiet soundproof booth is for, and of course it has its usefulness and that’s why it’s done.
But what we’re talking about here is in the context of the signal to noise separation performance in a real world test with surrounding noise. We don’t need to do another Word Recognition Test in noise. It’s useless to me because in this context, it’s not about what you actually “hear” (like you said), it’s about what you “understand”. I actually don’t really care what I “hear”, as long as I “understand” what is being said to me in a noisy place. If it involves my brain filling in the missing words, that’s fine with me.
It’s because your brain uses MANY things to isolate and understand speech, not just one thing. It’s not just what it hears, but how it hears it, like the tonal distinction between the speaker’s voice (like low for male or high for female), the loudness (or softness) of the speaker’s voice compared to others, and maybe the frequency of the speaker’s speech (how fast or slow they speak), and even what the babbles sound like differently from the speaker’s speech. All of that helps the brain isolate and formulate and arrive at an understanding.
In fact, if you simply do single word test in noise like you propose, chances are the result you achieve may fare worse than the result of a real-life complete sentences testing. That’s because the adjustment to improve what you “hear” can be overly corrected more than necessary for you to “understand”, possibly toward a more detrimental result instead of a more helpful result.
I don’t know about everyone else but if I set in a noisy restaurant, or lecture with a bunch talking all at once it all sounds like very loud white noise to me.
To me it sounds like my white noise machine that I sleep with but much louder. But what is interesting if I am in a really noisy restaurant and I take out my aids the noise is 10 times louder then with my aids on and functioning.
