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- Title
Effects of Conventional and Musician-Specific Hearing Protection Devices on Speech Intelligibility.
- Authors
Pinto, Giovanna Cardoso; Rocha, Clayton Henrique; Matas, Carla Gentile; Samelli, Alessandra Giannella
- Abstract
(1) Background: To assess and compare speech intelligibility with conventional and universal musician-specific hearing protection devices (HPD); (2) Methods: The sample comprised 15 normal-hearing musicians of both sexes who had been professionals for more than 5 years. They underwent thorough audiological assessment and free-field audiometry to measure the attenuation levels of three HPD models (musician-specific, silicone, and foam devices). The sentence recognition thresholds in quiet (SRTQ) and noise (SRTN) were assessed with the Lists of Sentences in Portuguese. User satisfaction with musician HPD was assessed after 2 months; (3) Results: Conventional HPD had higher pure-tone mean attenuation levels than musician HPD. No statistically significant differences were found in SRTQ and SRTN between the three HPD types. However, the musician HPD had higher mean signal-to-noise ratios and percentages of correct words from sentences presented in noise than the other HPD. The answers also indicated a positive trend toward satisfaction with the musician-specific HPD; (4) Conclusions: Despite the lack of significant differences in speech intelligibility while wearing the three HPD models in either quiet or noise, the musician-specific HPD provided greater musical sound quality. This reinforces the possibility of an effective and adequate use of protection to preserve musicians' hearing.
- Subjects
HEARING protection; SPEECH audiometry; INTELLIGIBILITY of speech; SIGNAL-to-noise ratio; MUSICIANS
- Publication
Acoustics (2624-599X), 2023, Vol 5, Issue 1, p242
- ISSN
2624-599X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/acoustics5010014