Pure Tone & Speech Audiometry

Pure tone audiometry is the basic test to find out if a hearing loss is present or not. During the test, the testee wears a headphone or insert ear phones through which pure tones at different frequencies are being presented.

The intensity of the tones is gradually reduced until the hearing threshold (the point at which tones are barely audible) is found. The result is expressed in decibel(dB) and entered into an audiogram form.

By means of speech audiometry, , the level of intelligibility at different intensity level is being tested. The test consists of a certain number of words being presented via headphones or free field loudspeakers. The testee would have to repeat the words being presented and the percentage of words being correctly repeated can be derived.

Speech tests can be used for various purposes such as; evaluating how much intelligibility is left without using hearing instruments, predicting and evaluating the intelligibility improvement by means of hearing instruments and comparing intelligibility differences between different hearing instruments.