Evaluation of a notched-noise test on a mobile phone

The ability to conduct hearing tests and estimate auditory function at home or in the workplace can be useful for screening or longitudinal studies and allow the collection of diagnostic data from tests that are too time consuming to be feasible in the clinic. However, moving away from an acoustically controlled environment may influence the results of a test (e.g., through masking due to higher levels of background noise), increasing the uncertainty in the test measurements. In this study, 9 normal-hearing participants completed a notched noise masking experiment with 3 different experimental setups: in a psychoacoustic test booth with a standard laboratory PC; in a psychoacoustic test booth with a mobile device; and in a quiet office room with a mobile device. The accuracy and reliability of the mobile implementation was compared to results obtained with the laboratory setup. The effect of the test environment was investigated by comparing the mobile platform results between booth and office. The mobile device implementation corresponded well with the laboratory results for a notch width of zero, but showed a systematic bias when the width of the notch was increased. The reliability of the mobile implementation was comparable to the laboratory. Moving outside the sound-insulated booth did not affect the mobile platform results.