A fitting method for headphones to compensate individual hearing impairments

Sensorineural hearing loss often results in altered loudness perception and a smaller perceivable dynamic range. To compensate sensorineural hearing loss it is necessary to fit an individual compressive gain. Fitting of hearing aids is usually done by professionals together with the hearing aid user. To give the users of TV-headsets the possibility to adjust not only the volume of the acoustic signal but also the dynamics, three different versions of interactive self-fitting systems were designed and evaluated. The user tests were performed with 11 subjects with mild to moderate hearing loss. The results were evaluated with regard to benefit in quailty, loudness perception and speech intelligibility.