hearing tests - where and how?


It appears that "audiologists" are really only in the business of selling hearing aids, which are not even remotely full-range. After deciding to get tested, I found that almost no one does full range hearing tests - they don't bother to test beynd 8khz. I suspect that many readers of this forum would not consider an 8khz upper limit an adequate test. Has anyone already researched this, or found a source for a REAL hearing test? A Houston recommendation would be ideal.
lloydc

Showing 1 response by dbphd

At such high frequencies the wavelengths are so short that placement of a transducer is not very reliable, and the perceived frequency response can vary from trail to trail. If you're trying to use speaker in a no-anachoic environment, minute head movements can vary the results. In psychoacoutic testing we trusted only forced-choice tests in which the listener tries to identify which interval contained the test tone over many trials. Low level hearing is a stochastic process, so the concept of threshold is just that. And then there's the problem with calibration . . .

And what difference does it make anyway? Why not just listen to the audio system of interest?

db