What to Expect at a Hearing Test

During the consultation, we will ask you about your hearing history and your family history, as well as any other noise-related events that may have affected your hearing in a single incident. With this background information in place, we move on to your hearing test. 

First, in the physical examination, we check your ears and ear canals using an otoscope. We look for any injuries or irregularities in your ears that might obstruct your hearing.

The pure tone test is used to evaluate your ability to hear sounds with different features, namely volume (or amplitude) and pitch (or frequency). To test your hearing capacity, we play different sounds for you and ask you to respond by pressing a button indicating that you have heard the sound. 

Many hearing healthcare providers will begin with sounds at a louder level, though they should not be uncomfortable to you, and they will become increasingly softer. Other evaluators find it beneficial to provide a mixed bag of frequencies and amplitudes to test which you can hear. The most important thing to keep in mind with a Pure Tone Audiometry evaluation is that nobody can hear all the tones played. Every pair of ears will lose the ability to hear at some point. Don’t be embarrassed if you are unable to hear a sound. That is precisely the reason for the test. Simply relax your mind and focus your attention on the sounds coming to you. 

Another test we will perform is Speech Audiometry. This type of test not only involves playing sounds of varied amplitude and frequency,  but also speech is introduced to the test. Sometimes you may hear full words, but other times these will be the smaller building blocks of language, such as syllables or phonemes. The benefit of this kind of test is being able to analyze if there are sounds, combinations of sounds, or types of voices that are difficult to hear. Some people have trouble understanding what people say at a quiet level, even though they might be able to hear pure tones in that range. Other people have particular trouble hearing children’s voices. By adding speech to the pure tone test, we are better able to assess your level of hearing in a crucial context: conversation.

• Masked Air and Bone Conduction: Audiometric masking is used to provide the most accurate results from a Pure Tone Audiometry evaluation. It involves playing a masking noise to one ear through headphones. This separates the ears by preventing the non-test ear to assist the ear that is being evaluated. Another type of hearing test is bone conduction which helps determine the type of hearing loss someone is experiencing. It is performed by placing a headband on the patient that has a small device that sits behind the ear, called an oscillator. The oscillator vibrates and sends these tones directly to the cochlea, meaning that the outer and middle ears are skipped. This identifies if the hearing loss is occurring in the outer, middle, or inner ear.
• MCL and UCL: Pure Tone Audiometry is the most common type of diagnostic evaluation used to assess hearing loss. This test involves wearing headphones - in a soundproof room - that are attached to an audiometer that plays sounds as different frequencies. You will indicate the sounds you are able to hear and these results will be captured in real-time. They will be presented to you on an audiogram which is a chart that graphically shows the specifics of your hearing loss. This includes Most Comfortable Loudness (MCL) and Uncomfortable Loudness Level (UCL). MCL represents the loudest level at which sound is comfortable to hear. UCL represents the level at which sound is uncomfortable for the listener. These data points help identify the individuals hearing thresholds which inform what their hearing needs are.
  • Masked Air and Bone Conduction: Audiometric masking is used to provide the most accurate results from a Pure Tone Audiometry evaluation. It involves playing a masking noise to one ear through headphones. This separates the ears by preventing the non-test ear to assist the ear that is being evaluated. Another type of hearing test is bone conduction which helps determine the type of hearing loss someone is experiencing. It is performed by placing a headband on the patient that has a small device that sits behind the ear, called an oscillator. The oscillator vibrates and sends these tones directly to the cochlea, meaning that the outer and middle ears are skipped. This identifies if the hearing loss is occurring in the outer, middle, or inner ear. 
  • MCL and UCL: Pure Tone Audiometry is the most common type of diagnostic evaluation used to assess hearing loss. This test involves wearing headphones - in a soundproof room -  that are attached to an audiometer that plays sounds as different frequencies. You will indicate the sounds you are able to hear and these results will be captured in real-time. They will be presented to you on an audiogram which is a chart that graphically shows the specifics of your hearing loss. This includes Most Comfortable Loudness (MCL) and Uncomfortable Loudness Level (UCL). MCL represents the loudest level at which sound is comfortable to hear. UCL represents the level at which sound is uncomfortable for the listener. These data points help identify the individuals hearing thresholds which inform what their hearing needs are.