By Jennifer Schumacher, Au.D.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us that people are exploring more online options for practically everything than ever before. Grocery shopping, prescriptions, clothes - and you can even buy a car, glasses, contacts, and braces online now! So - can hearing tests be performed online?
We found that over the past year, we had more patients come see us for hearing needs than the year before. Since people were home with family almost all the time, their hearing loss became more evident to everyone around them. They found they had difficulty with Zoom meetings, hearing on the phone (as more and more of us use cell phones and not landlines at home now), TVs were louder (and on almost all the time) - and general conversation was found to be more difficult overall. In the spirit of “online everything”, I looked into online hearing tests. If you feel that you have difficulty hearing or you think a family member does, there are many, many options available to do a hearing test in your own home. All you need is a computer or cell phone, a good pair of headphones, and a quiet room.
First question though - why a quiet room? We do get asked a lot about why we do hearing tests in a sound treated room instead of in a noisy area, as most people say that’s where they have the most difficulty. We test in quiet rooms so that we can determine the softest level your ears and brain can hear and process sounds. From here we can start to work on where you have difficulty and in what type of situations are challenging, no matter if you have hearing loss or hearing within normal limits. So, your hearing test tells us how your ears perform in the best and quietest situation possible.
I looked through a lot of different online tests and found that overall, they’re easy to perform, the instructions and explanations are pretty clear, and they take less than 5 minutes. They also ask about different situations and what you may find challenging to hear. Here are some good tests to try if you’re curious about your hearing:
Hearing aid manufacturers:
Starkey, Resound, Widex, and Phonak - Following the initial calibration of your speakers or headphones, various environmental and everyday sounds are presented, and you select the softest volume at which you can hear them. Single words are also presented in varying levels of noise. Resound and Widex also present a graph of pictures and numbers, and you select the picture you hear while the level of background noise is gradually increased. All have very good explanations at the end about your results and if you should seek further testing from a professional. None of the manufacturers give you an audiogram, which is what we perform in the office and is a graph of your hearing at different frequencies. However, their tests do give you a very good idea if you have problems hearing in noise.
MiMi hearing test - this online test does present tones at various frequencies and creates a graph of your hearing that you can bring to the office for a comparison. I found that it was accurate more often than not, although a few discrepancies were found (one person who wears hearing aids found he had “normal hearing”). It also showed more “hearing loss” in certain frequencies fairly often. However, this app has very good explanations and recommendations on what to do if a hearing loss is suspected.
uSound - also presents various tones at various frequencies and creates a graph of your hearing. I found this to also be mostly accurate, and when compared with the MiMi, results were about the same. It also has very good explanations at the end and gives recommendations on what to do if a hearing loss is suspected.
Personally, I think if you’re curious about hearing, it would be a better option to try one of the manufacturers' hearing tests. The MiMi and uSound give overall good results, but I did find that they gave some false results in certain frequencies that are very sensitive to environmental sounds (and that goes back to why we test in a booth!). However, if you try any of them and a hearing loss is suspected, please give us a call and we’ll schedule an appointment to find out for sure!