Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Paper (tutorial chapter in a themed journal issue on test-box and real-ear measurement)

Chapter 3: Setting the Hearing Aid Response and Verifying Signal Processing and Features in the Test Box

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/palmer-zitelli-2024/ · record checked 9 October 2026

  • Palmer C, Zitelli L
  • Seminars in Hearing 45(2):172-204 (Thieme)

Independent (Communication Science and Disorders, University of Pittsburgh; no conflict of interest declared; the step-by-step procedures are written for Audioscan's Verifit test system)

Summary

A clinical tutorial that includes how to check a hearing aid's telecoil programme in a test box, for telephone use and for room loops.

Key findings

  • Says that a telecoil ordered on a hearing aid should be verified as working before the aid is dispensed, and that for loop listening the telecoil programme must be set appropriately and the user must be able to engage it.
  • Uses the hearing aid's ANSI test as the target: with the microphone programme fitted and verified, the telecoil output should match the reference test gain. For telephones, SPLITS is measured on a telephone magnetic field simulator with the aid moved to maximise output, and RSETS compares it with the microphone; for room loops, SPLIV is measured with the aid held vertically as worn, and relative test loop sensitivity compares it with the microphone. The goal for both differences is 0 dB.
  • Notes that in many modern hearing aids the telecoil can be programmed separately for phone use and for room-loop use.
  • Warns that in open fittings, where the microphone programme gives little low-frequency gain because natural sound reaches the ear, a telecoil programme set identically will lack low frequencies; it advises a telecoil response with more low-frequency gain than the microphone, giving the telephone's mainly low- and mid-frequency response as the reason.
  • Advises practising with the patient how to switch into the telecoil programme, adjust its volume and switch back to normal listening.

Limits

A teaching chapter with a worked example (RSETS 0 dB, relative test loop sensitivity -0.5 dB), not a study of fitted devices. Its procedures follow one maker's test equipment, and it does not say how often the checks are done in practice.

Read the original

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11161217

Link checked . We link to the original and do not host copies.

Cited in

Cite this source

Palmer C, Zitelli L. Chapter 3: Setting the Hearing Aid Response and Verifying Signal Processing and Features in the Test Box. Seminars in Hearing 45(2):172-204 (Thieme). 17 May 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11161217/ (accessed 9 October 2026).

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