Most Comfortable Level, Uncomfortable Level, and Dynamic Range with Stimulus Type

Abstract

This study was to establish the estimates of MCL (Most Comfortable Level), UCL (UnComfortable Level), and DR (Dynamic Range) using different stimuli. There are several types of stimulus; 1) pure tone of 0.5, 1, 2, 3, and 4 kHz, 2) narrow band noise of 0.5, 1, 2, 3, and 4 kHz, 3) monosyllabic words, 4) bisyllabic words, 5) sentence, and 6) speech noise. 40 ears (10 males and 10 females) with normal hearing and without sound tolerance problems were calculated and the average of the participants’ age was 20.30±1.66 years old. Stimulus was presented by TDH- 39 headphone and 5 dB steps of ascending method above threshold using pure tone average or speech recognition threshold continuing to the uncomfortable loud level. The nine categories of scaling were used from very soft to painfully loud. The results were as follows: 1) MCL and UCL were showed differences significantly(p < .05) with stimulus type, 2) MCL and UCL of using NBN stimuli were higher than pure tone, speech stimulus (monosyllabic words, bisyllabic words, sentence) were the highest UCL, 3) MCL and UCL were recommended recordings by both ears. These results can be useful for considering different stimuli according to subject’s sound sensitivity and different situations.