Abstract
A group of 16 severely hearing-impaired adults compared two types of body-worn hearing aids: A stereophonic hearing aid with compression (SC-aid) and a monophonic aid without compression (dummy) in a double-blind experiment. Each subject was given a hearing aid of each type and compared them in some test situations in the clinic and during a period of one month in some daily life situations. The results show no effect from the stereophonic feature of the SC-aid. With regard to the compression feature, the subjects performed better with the SC-aid in a complete speech audiometric test in noise-free environments. However, in situations with various types of background noise the subjects generally performed better with the dummy aid. Also, the subjects generally preferred the dummy aid and claimed that background noise appeared louder in the SC-aid. On the basis of these results it is proposed that the “knee point” of the SC-aid should be adjustable and furthermore that these results can hardly be generalized to include very young children.