Early Identification of Hearing Loss with A Novel Consumer Headphone

Current consumer electronic technology allows devices to assess individual listener’s hearing status and adjust sound output accordingly. One of the challenges is how accurate these measurements are compared to the real audiometric information. The purpose of this study is to measure the accuracy of thresholds obtained from both a consumer hearing device and clinical audiometer. Ninety-seven subjects\u27 audiometric thresholds were obtained from both Even headphone and a clinical audiometer (stored in Noah). Pearson\u27s correlation coefficient r were calculated to compare the thresholds. The average differences between Even and Noah thresholds were later applied as correction factors. Results showed that: 1) A statistically significant correlation between Even thresholds and Noah thresholds at all frequencies tested, for both ears (p \u3c 0.001); 2) Even‚ÄìNoah threshold differences hold relatively smaller distributions at lower frequencies than higher frequencies, in the left ear than the right ear (p \u3c 0.01). 3) Pairwise t test showed no statistically significant differences between corrected Even thresholds and Noah thresholds. This suggests that consumer headphones can have consistent and stable threshold measurement that correlated well with those obtained from audiometers. Manufacturers could use these device-measured thresholds in their sound design and could potentially help identify hearing loss earlier