Wayne's World

Last month, Dr. Wayne Staab was invited to present on OTC developments in the US at the British Irish Hearing Instrument Manufacturer’s Association (BIHIMA) conference, held in Birmingham, England. With the presentation, he provided attendees at the conference a great synopsis of US government regulations relating to hearing aids from the 1970’s to today. The presentation is now available at

The phenomenon of binaural summation is considered one of the practical advantages of hearing with two ears. Binaural loudness summation (binaural additivity) has a long history of experimentation. This includes binaural loudness, comparisons between monaural and binaural thresholds, and comparisons of suprathreshold monaural and binaural loudness functions. As early as 1929, von Békésy1 and Causse and Chavasse2, found maximum diotic

A number of years ago, an article was published describing the importance of the impedance formula in interpretation of audiograms1.  The article by Campbell offered a fairly simple and visible way to help understand the audiogram, based on stiffness and mass, and the impact of these two elements on conductive hearing loss.  It is recognized that today more sophisticated methods

What is Earwax?   It has been called earwax, cerumen, gunk, cat earwax (Japan), and other names, not all complimentary.  It is technically called cerumen, and while often thought of as a hygienic nuisance, is far from this, actually representing one our body’s ingenious functional mechanisms, even though scientists are still not certain why we have earwax. It is the

Ah – Nothing like a neologism Hearing Aids, Hearables, Wearables, Earables – Evolving, But in Which Direction? New product trends related to devices at the ear have taken up some rather interesting names – hearables, wearables, and earables – in addition to the more traditional hearing aids. Figure 1. Bragi Dash hearable. A hearable (Figure 1) as described by Wikipedia is

What Would be a Preferred Hearing Aid Performance?   Would a consumer select the same hearing aid performance as was recommended by an audiologist if given a choice among different signal processing schemes? Results show that there is not agreement, at least for four different hearing aid algorithms (different hearing aid operating systems) as reported in this study. This post

Sound Localization – Time-of-Arrival Differences at the Ears   Time-of-arrival of sound at the two ears is an important contributor to sound localization. In this continuation of a series on binaural hearing, special attention is given to the second major contributor to sound localization, that of time-of-arrival of the sound at the two ears. Last week’s post on localization featured

Hearing Aid Selection: Consumer vs Hearing Aid Dispenser    This post is directed at answering the question: would a consumer select the same hearing aid signal processing algorithm as was recommended by an audiologist? A signal processing algorithm refers to a completely different type of functioning hearing aid, not just to single hearing aid that allowed the user to select from among

Ruptured eardrums are not uncommon, but when they occur, they are traumatic to the person involved.  However, there seems to be little knowledge among professionals working with the hearing impaired as to the actual pressure levels required to rupture the eardrum (tympanic membrane) even though they know that this can happen. There are many causes of eardrum rupture.  They include,

by Wayne Staab, PhD Historically, we think of the U.S. hearing aid market being served primarily by independent dispensers.  Following the very early years of hearing aid franchises, sales were made mostly by what we now refer to as independent hearing aid dealers (actually, at one time, called hearing aid audiologists). Over time, audiologists also entered the business of hearing