Localisation of Sound with Binaural Body-Worn Hearing Aids

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Abstract
In a series of studies it was found that localisation of sound with binaural body-worn hearing aids was far superior to localisation with monaural body-worn aids. This was demonstrated with four severely deaf and four normal hearing subjects. Optimum localisation was achieved when the microphones of the two aids were separated by a distance of 7 to 10 inches and there was limited evidence that a separation of 8 or 9 inches is ideal. The optimum separation for localising sounds in the horizontal plane did not appear to be influenced by stimulus frequency or whether the sound was presented from behind or in front of subject. For the normal hearing subjects localisation with binaural body-worn aids was equal to localisation with binaural ear-level aids but inferior to unaided binaural localisation. For the hearing-impaired subjects aided and unaided localisation was equivalent.