Real Ear Measurement

The verification step runs roughly ten to fifteen minutes per ear on top of programming, plus a short back-and-forth about what you're hearing while the test is live. A fitting appointment at Hughes Holistic Audiology is scheduled for about an hour, and the measurement is built into that hour rather than tacked onto the end of it.

It is time well spent. If high-frequency consonants are coming through sharp, or soft speech is sitting below where it should, that shows on the screen instead of surfacing three weeks later as frustration. Adjustments are made while the probe is still in place, so you hear the corrected setting before you go home.

Yes. Every hearing aid fit here is verified with real ear measurement at the initial appointment, and again any time the prescription changes in a meaningful way. It is not a premium add-on or a separate line on your paperwork. It is simply how a fitting is done at this practice.

That standard holds across every brand on the shelf, whether your devices are ReSound, Signia, Phonak, or Oticon. National surveys have long put the share of fitters performing REM near 30%, which explains a lot about why two people with the same hearing loss can walk away with very different experiences of their hearing aids.

First-fit software makes an educated guess. It reads your audiogram, applies an average adult ear canal, and outputs a starting prescription. That is a reasonable place to begin, but research has repeatedly found first-fit settings land below target, especially in the high frequencies where consonants like s, f, and th live.

Those are the sounds that separate hearing speech from understanding it, which is why the difference shows up most in restaurants and group conversation. Measuring the output in your own ear and correcting toward target is what turns amplification into clarity. See how this fits into the appointment on our hearing aid fitting page.