[Stereophonic apparatus: our hearing aid test].

The authors wanted to verify the advantages produced by binaural amplification in the loudness and in the speech identification. To value the improvement in speech identification they used the Jerger's test (1976); and to value the loudness improvement they measured, gain characteristics of the aid with monoaural and binaural amplification. They executed the test on 50 hearing aid users, chosen among 10 and 84 years old, suffering from sensorineural bilateral hearing loss between 40 and 80 dB. It results that : 1. The gain obtained by the use of binaural amplification is 5 dB lower than the one obtained by monoaural. 2. The binaural amplification permits a remarkable advantage in speech identification, the advantage is directly proportionated to deafness. The authors conclude that the described test is valid, simple and that it is possible to apply it by cheap instruments.