Closing the Open Fitting: An Effective Method to Optimize Speech Understanding
Choosing a closed hearing aid coupling system can positively effect speech understanding in background noise—although, for some patients, at the sacrifice of own-voice sound quality. However, new systems like Signia Own Voice Processing (OVP) are making it possible to “get the best of both worlds.” The mean SNR additional benefit for a closed fitting in this study was 3 dB, and as much as 5 dB for some participants. With as much as 17% improvement in speech understanding for each 1 dB of SNR improvement, this can represent a magnitude sufficient to be able to change a patient’s socialization activities.