What our Hearing Loss Simulator entails?
Our Hearing Loss Simulator uses computer audio simulations to allow you to discover what people with mild, moderate, or severe hearing loss experience and how hearing aids may improve hearing and intelligibility of speech. The technology works by manipulating the decibel (dB) for each frequency measured on a hearing test.
The simulation includes a group of audio files that simulate what people with sensorineural hearing loss perceive in specific contexts. The audio files are categorized by type and contain conversations in various settings and with different loudness of noise, such as a conversation in a restaurant, outside in nature, and while listening to music.
You can change your audio to mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss or switch back and forth between them to see how the different severities affect your hearing abilities and speech intelligibility. Our simulator allows you to play each audio clip and hear what it sounds like with normal hearing and compare that to the different severities of hearing loss.
Keep in mind that what you will hear will depend on your current hearing level, the portion of sounds you might miss will differ. For instance, people with moderate high-frequency loss will naturally have fewer missing sounds and consonants than those with severe hearing loss. In addition, if you have mild hearing loss and want to experience the moderate level, you may not hear anything because the hearing loss level simulated adds to your initial level. Likewise, speech intelligibility in noise will also vary according to hearing loss type.
If your goal is to simulate the impact of hearing aids on your auditory abilities, the portion of speech you miss will differ depending on your current hearing level. Likewise, comparing sound clips with hearing aids might differ depending on your current hearing.