How Speaker Configuration of Recorded Media Affects Subjective Ratings for Listeners With and Without Hearing Loss.
Todd A Ricketts, Rebecca Krivoshey, Javier Santos-Garrido and 2 others
Surround sound did not outperform stereo or TV speakers for older listeners with hearing loss.
In several conditions it was rated worst for speech understanding. Raising dialogue above background sound helped more than any speaker change, with the largest gain for hearing loss.
Key findings
1Surround sound was not rated better than stereo or TV speakers, and was often the lowest-rated option for speech understanding, particularly for older listeners with hearing loss.
2The dialogue-to-background ratio was the strongest factor for both sound quality and speech understanding, with the largest benefit for listeners with hearing loss.
3Young adults with normal hearing rated TV speakers significantly worse than external speakers, but older listeners with or without hearing loss did not show this difference.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
No group of young adults with hearing loss, so the effects of age and hearing loss cannot be separated 10-second segments may not capture the full listening experience or the immersion that longer content provides Only center-channel dialogue was tested; dialogue panned across multiple speakers was not included The low-frequency effects channel was removed from all conditions, which may have affected sound quality ratings Outcomes are subjective self-ratings, not objective speech recognition scores Single site, single set of equipment, and a single set of 12 clips
Declared interests
Funded by Phonak, a hearing aid manufacturer, and an NIDCD training grant. The study does not test a Phonak product, but the funder operates in the hearing loss space.
The easy way to misread this
The differences between loudspeaker configurations, while statistically significant, were modest. The paper itself notes that 12 rationalized arcsine units is roughly one point on the 13-point rating scale, and several of the reported gaps between speaker types fell below that. A clinician should weigh the practical size of the difference, not just the p-value, before advising a patient to change their setup.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →