A fitting strategy for digital hearing aids based on loudness and sound quality.

In order to find an adequate fitting strategy for digital compression hearing aids a combination of two interactive fitting strategies was developed, one of these based on frequency specifice loudness (ScalAdapt) and the other based on overall loudness and on sound quality (Cambridge Procedure). This new fitting strategy was tested against the sound and overall loudness based strategy and against a prescriptive fitting strategy in a 2-weeks field test with questionnaires and in laboratory measurements, subjectively as well as objectively. With six sensorineural hearing impaired participants no straightforward results were achieved. Additionally, the different testing procedures indicate (in tendency) different fitting strategies to be superior. More subjects will have to be tested and innovative evaluation methods have to be considered.