Summary
A loop-on versus loop-off test of speech understanding and rated sound quality for hearing aid users and normal-hearing listeners in a reverberant university lecture hall.
Key findings
- Hearing loop calibration reports measuring magnetic field strength, signal frequency response and electrical noise within the looped area using a field-strength meter with its telecoil vertical. No numerical results for those three checks appear in the readable article. The 43 dBA figure in Testing Site is acoustic room noise.
- Hearing loop calibration describes the 7 × 3 m test wire taped to the lecture-hall floor; it does not establish coverage of the entire 120-seat room. The Acknowledgements credit Steve Thunder of Assistive Hearing Systems LLC for installation help and continuing technical support. The article does not explicitly identify the hall's location or experiment dates.
- The Methods subsection on speech recognition testing says HINT scores counted correctly identified words in sentence lists. The reported percentages are word-correct scores, rather than the percentage of complete sentences repeated correctly.
- The Acknowledgements say portions of the work were presented on 7 October 2013. The article’s 2016 publication year should not be treated as the year the experiment took place.
- A 7 × 3 m perimeter loop, installed to IEC standards, covered the test area of a 120-seat lecture hall with 0.9 s reverberation time, 43 dBA background noise and a steel-reinforced concrete floor.
- Participants were 26 bilateral hearing aid users aged 35 to 77 (mean 64) with telecoils, from the university's hearing clinic, whose telecoil programs were added or checked in the clinic beforehand, and 45 normal-hearing listeners aged 18 to 59.
- With HINT sentences at -3 dB SNR, hearing aid users scored 14% correct with the loop off and 88% with it on; at +3 dB SNR, 52% and 89%. Normal-hearing listeners went from 62% to 98% and from 89% to 99%.
- Both groups rated listening effort, sound quality, pleasantness and naturalness significantly better with the loop on, for speech, music and television clips; loudness ratings did not differ, which the authors attribute to a rating scale that did not say whether louder was better.
- All but one participant preferred listening through the loop; 9 of 10 hearing aid users said they were likely to use a loop where one is installed, and over half of each group said they would pay $50 to $500 for a telecoil.
Limits
One room and one loop; the comparison is loop against the hearing aid's own microphones about 6 m from the loudspeaker, not against other assistive listening systems. Published in a trade journal rather than a peer-reviewed journal. Two of the three funders make hearing aids or loop systems, the third funds loop advocacy, and one author is a loop advocate. Whether listeners knew which condition they were in is not reported.
Read the original
Cited in
- What do listeners prefer, and how often do they use venue systems?Partly answered
- Where do hearing loops fall short: metal, spill, noise and upkeep?Partly answered
- Are telecoils switched on and set up well enough for loops to work?Not reliable yet
- What reaches a cochlear implant user in a venue, and how well?Partly answered
- What works in university lecture halls and large teaching rooms?Partly answered
Cite this source
Magann Faivre R, Ismail F, Sterkens J, Thunder T, Chung K. Effects of Hearing Loop Systems on Speech Understanding and Sound Quality of Normal-hearing Listeners and Hearing Aid Users. Hearing Review 23(8):28. 18 July 2016. https://hearingreview.com/hearing-products/testing-equipment/effects-hearing-loop-systems-speech-understanding-sound-quality-normal-hearing-listeners-hearing-aid-users (accessed 13 October 2026).
Every finding here cites its source, and who funded each source is labelled. This site does not recommend products. Found an error or a missing study? Suggest a correction.