| The
advantage of using the dB HL system may not yet be apparent and this may
seem like an exercise designed to confuse rather than facilitate the measurement
process. If we were using the dB SPL system to report thresholds and you
were told that an individual had a pure tone threshold at a given frequency
of 25 dB, would you interpret this as indicating a hearing loss? You would
need to know two additional pieces of information before making that determination.
First, you would need to know what frequency was being tested and then you
would need to determine what is expected at that frequency in terms of average
normal hearing. With those two pieces of information you could determine
whether the reported threshold was indicating normal hearing or the presence
of a hearing loss. |
