As my readers know, I don’t think the audiogram is a very useful measure when it comes to deciding to do something about your hearing. It’s not a very useful tool for setting up hearing aids. It’s possibly useful as a starting point for finding out why you have hearing problems, and it’s a way of comparing your hearing profile with other peoples – although it’s a bit like having a shoe size, without the width fitting. And then we come to the decibel. It’s not a particularly easy scale to understand and use, and it probably confuses plenty of people when they look at their audiogram. The challenge for scientists wanting to quantify sound measures was that the ear can process sounds over such a big range of pressures. It also doesn’t tell us much about loudness.
The IHearYou® system for self fitting of hearing aids is based around individuals. Our hearing aids are set to comfortable listening levels, because we know that loudness is a subjective measure.
I have just read a marvellous explanation of the decibel scale in a book by John Powell, called “How Music Works” It’s a great book, by the way. Powell says “I think the decibel scale was invented in a bar, late one night, by a committee of drunken electrical engineers…”
More constructive comments next time
