Effect of headphone position on absolute threshold measurements

Pure-tone audiometry (measurement of absolute thresholds using pure tones) is the main test for the diagnosis of hearing loss. The aim of the present study is to determine whether the headphone placement over a listener’s ears has an influence on pure-tone audiometric tests, for a large frequency range, for Sennheiser HD600 and Telephonics TDH39 headphones. Audiograms (with 1 dB step, and including 10 frequencies up to 14 kHz) were performed several times on normal-hearing subjects, for different – or not different – headphone positions (allowing to dissociate between effects of headphone position and cognitive factors). Globally, the results seem to indicate that the reliability without headphone removing was quite close to the one observed with removing. The influence of removing did not appear more crucial for high frequencies. The rare frequencies for which a removing effect was seen seem to be function of the headphone model. Finally the results were quite different among the subjects.