Relative hearing thresholds in otologically normal young adults to warble tones, pure tones, and one-third-octave filtered resynthesised musical sounds

OBJECTIVES: 1. To describe a standardised process for filtering and processing musical sounds for use in hearing assessments. 2. To compare hearing thresholds to warble tones and one-third-octave filtered musical sounds. 3. To compare the variability of the differences between filtered musical sound and warble tone thresholds with the variability of differences between pure tone and warble tone thresholds. DESIGN: Monaural hearing thresholds to standard and filtered musical sounds were compared at three centre frequencies (0.5, 1 and 4 kHz). STUDY SAMPLE: Thirty otologically normal young adults participated at each frequency. RESULTS: At 0.5 kHz small mean differences (<2 dB) in thresholds were seen between some individual musical sounds and the warble tone, with musical sounds giving lower (better) thresholds. Otherwise, thresholds were equivalent. The variability seen between pure tone thresholds and warble tone thresholds was similar to that seen between musical stimulus thresholds and warble tone thresholds (limits of agreement were around +4 to -5 dB in all cases). CONCLUSIONS: Musical sounds, filtered and processed as described, show promise for use in hearing assessments. Further research should compare thresholds in infants, those with hearing losses, including sloping losses, and investigate different bandwidths of musical sounds.