Hearing Loss Simulation

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What’s it Like to Have Hearing Loss?

It’s not just like plugging your ears. A person with normal hearing can hear quiet, medium and loud sounds that vary from low pitch to high pitch. When you have hearing loss you often lose the higher-pitched sounds, which include consonants like T, S and F. But you still may be able to hear strong vowel sounds such as A, E and I. Speech becomes harder to comprehend and sounds garbled and strange.

This is how speech sounds to people with hearing loss

Try our hearing loss simulator to better understand what your family member, friend or colleague may be experiencing. This simulator enables you to listen to common sounds in a variety of environments, first with normal hearing and then with simulated levels of hearing loss.

Hearing Loss Simulator

Select a Hearing Loss Level

People with normal hearing have no difficulty hearing and understanding speech, regardless of the environment or distance from the sound source.

Normal hearing Chart

Speech sounds appearing above the dotted line are inaudible. Severe hearing loss may exclude 100% of conversational speech.

People with mild hearing loss have difficulty hearing soft consonant sounds making words seem incomplete. Noisy environments make hearing more challenging.

Mild Hearing Loss Chart

Speech sounds appearing above the dotted line are inaudible. Severe hearing loss may exclude 100% of conversational speech.

For people with moderate hearing loss, hard and soft consonant sounds become inaudible and speech becomes difficult to understand — particularly with background noise.

Moderate Loss Chart

Speech sounds appearing above the dotted line are inaudible. Severe hearing loss may exclude 100% of conversational speech.

For people with severe hearing loss, some loud sounds are audible, but communication without a hearing instrument is impossible.

Servere hearing loss chart

Speech sounds appearing above the dotted line are inaudible. Severe hearing loss may exclude 100% of conversational speech.


For best results: Use desktop speakers or headphones and set the volume level of your computer to a comfortable level. Play test sound

Next page: If you believe that a family member is suffering from hearing loss, complete our Hearing Loss Observation Questionnaire >>
Powerful. Adaptable. Sometimes invisible. Learn about treating hearing loss with Hearing Aids >>






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