Sound quality judgment during acclimatization of hearing aid.

This study included 10 subjects with sensorineural hearing loss. They had not previously used hearing aids. The hearing aid fitting with "behind-the-ear' aids was based on the NAL method. Judging the sounds in their ordinary home environment, three sound situations (programmes) were selected, permitting the subjects to listen to one programme with speech, another with music and a third with "background noise'. For the group as a whole, significant differences were found between the sound quality judgements with and without the hearing aid. When the judgements of the programmes with background noise were excluded in the analysis, there were significant differences over time in the group as a whole on the scales for clarity and total impression.