I received a hearing test today from an audiologist without a quiet room. He stuffed sponges and receivers in my ears and performed the test that way. When the audiologist talked to me through the microphone I had to concentrate very hard to understand him and yet when I talked to him in his office without the equipment connected, his voice was very clear. Everything through the test equipment sounded like I was in a tunnel or a large conference room (a large amount of resonant sounds and very poor quality).
The results of the test was much worse than I expected. It indicated that at 500 Hz, my hearing was about 15 DB and it got progressively worse until at 3000 Hz it was 90 DB down. Also my understanding of words that he spoke was not very good.
I question the results because I do not see similar results when I take the following online hearing test. With this test I use good quality headphones (Sennheiser HDR 140) and a quiet as possible environment. That test (using point of no sound) indicates that my hearing starts to drop off at 1500 Hz. At 3000 Hz it indicates a difference of 45 DB below my lower frequencies and 42 DB down on equal loudness test. I’ve taken that test several times and the results are fairly consistent each time. My girlfriend who has pretty good hearing, took the test and her results indicated that her hearing was fairly flat through all the frequencies from 250 Hz to 8000 Hz and was about 10 DB better than my low frequencies.
I performed the online test the way it was recommended (set each frequency to the same loudness) but found it more difficult to try to relate each frequency to the same loudness. I then set all frequencies to the point of no sound and felt more comfortable that I was getting better results that way. However both ways produced similar results.
Performing the online test has the following disadvantages. A 0 DB reference cannot be produced and the sound is always on for both ears. Therefore you cannot produce results as related to 0 DB but only the DB relationship between the different frequencies. Also if your hearing is not approximately the same in both ears, you would need to somehow plug one ear so you can get accurate results. You also probably need cupped type headphones to try to keep as much of the background noise out as possible.
The following is the online test.
Free hearing test on line – Equal loudness contours and audiometry2
This free hearing test on line is an interactive test to produce equal loudness curves or equal loudness congtours.
Can someone try the above online test and see how it compares with your ?
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