Real Ear Measurement

Our passion is to help our patients to hear better. Advanced diagnostic examinations allow us to determine the best plan of action to improve your hearing. We specifically conduct real ear measurements to ensure that you are getting optimal results. Although hearing aid software programs the device to your hearing test, every individual ear is different which can affect how sound is transmitted. By performing real ear measures, we can make sure your hearing aid is providing you with the appropriate amount of sound for speech understanding.

How does the size and shape of our ear canal affect our hearing aid?

If you are in a room speaking with someone, the size of the room, the location of the speaker, and the acoustics of the room affect how well your message gets transmitted. For example, if you are trying to talk to someone across a very large space, by the time the sound of your message reaches the person across the room, or the listener, it is not going to sound very loud. On the other hand, if you’re in a very small space and speaking at the same volume as in the large room, the message is going to reach the listener at a very loud level.

Now, think of the ear canal as the room, the speaker as the hearing aid and the other person, or the listener as the ear drum. With a very large ear canal or room, our speaker or hearing aid is going to have to transmit sound at a louder level to reach our listener, or ear drum at an appropriate level. With a very small ear canal or room, our speaker or hearing aid is going to have to transmit sound at a slightly softer level to reach our listener or ear drum at an appropriate and comfortable level.

What is this based on?

Your audiogram, or chart of your hearing loss at each pitch is entered into the device. The system then generates targets for the hearing aid output based on pitch. Our “targets,” or where the output of the device sound be, are based on years of research in adults with hearing loss who use digital hearing aids. Most manufacturers base their sound algorithms on this research, so testing can be done with any hearing aid regardless of brand or age.

How can we measure the sound in our “room” reaching our “listener?”

By using Real Ear measures! We perform this measures by placing a small microphone in the ear canal alongside your hearing aid. A computer then plays live speech samples at different levels and measures the output of the hearing aid in your ear.

We measure soft speech, average conversational speech, and loud speech to ensure that any level of sound is reaching your “listener,” or ear drum, at an appropriate level. The maximum output of the hearing aid is also measured to ensure comfort and safe listening in case of extremely loud sounds.