The difference between Oticon More tier 1 to tier 3

@cvkemp said:

Also true. But at least it isn’t like some places placing you in a room with a computer peeping tones at you and your response is the only test you get. That is so ridiculous and useless.

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.

@cvkemp said:

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.

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.

I don’t dismiss the audiogram test I get one at least annually. I am saying not all audiograms are equal. And not all audiologist do them correctly.

I agree, after REM we should be pushing for this.

WH

@Volusiano said:

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I don’t know why it’s not more common. The paper test is usually just to ensure we’re not over-amplifying high frequencies.

Yes I can see where I would definitely benefit from that type of test.

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.

While that may be true, I’d like to have the noise voice related rather than white noise.

WH

Sorry - I’m getting mixed up as to who’s responding to whom!

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.

@cvkemp: I’d say it’s more like brown noise, Chuck .

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.