Rapid Audiometric Evaluation for Personalized Headphone Listening

A novel version of Békésy audiometry is developed that is suitable for remote administration via an app, and for DSP integration into headphones. To demonstrate the efficacy and usefulness of the approach, experiments were performed with 32 participants with a range of ages and hearing losses. In experiment 1, the developed modified Békésy audiometric approach was performed in the laboratory to show that the approach could rapidly and reliably obtain hearing threshold information from 100-16,000 kHz. In experiment 2, participants used a web app to obtain the same information; this information was used to apply gains on a 10-channel graphic equalizer. Participants then evaluated the quality of music in a direct comparison task. In experiment 3, participants were allowed to adjust the proposed correction levels at three frequency regions. They then compared subjective music quality with the correction. The results show that the proposed approach to include audiometric information is promising for the personalization of music experienced over headphones by deriving equalizations that account for the frequency response of both the individual and the headphone.