Consonant recognition and quality judgments of noise-reduction hearing aids

We evaluated seven different hearing aids worn by 13 experienced hearing-aid users. Two of the aids, the Audiotone A-54 and the Telex 363C, included amplitude compression. The others, two versions of a Maico aid (SP147), a Richards (ASE-B), a Rion (HB-69AS), and a Siemens (283ASP), have circuits designed to attenuate specific frequency regions in the presence of noise. Consonant recognition and quality judgments were measured with the processing circuit on and off in the presence of speech-babble noise and low-frequency noise. The results suggested that only a few subjects benefited from the processing circuits. Quality judgments and consonant recognition scores were not always in agreement.