The QuickSIN™ (Etymotic Research, Inc.) test

The QuickSIN™ (Etymotic Research, Inc.) is a quick and established test, available in English, which estimates a patient’s ability to understand speech in noise. The difficulty of hearing speech in presence of background noise is one of the most common problems faced by people suffering from hearing loss. A hearing-impaired person usually requires an increase in signal to noise ratio (SNR) to understand speech in noise, compared to a normal hearing person. The amount of required dB is defined as SNR loss. Since SNR loss cannot be reliably predicted from pure tone audiograms or other standard audiometric tests, Speech-In-Noise (SIN) tests were designed to measure it.

Among the SIN tests, the QuickSIN™ was developed to provide clinicians with a quick way to quantify a patient’s ability to hear in noise. In addition to estimating the SNR loss, the QuickSIN™ provides speech material specifically designed to assist professionals in deciding which hearing aid features can be most helpful for each patient’s needs.

The QuickSIN™ test has been developed so that a normal hearing person needs an average SNR of +2 dB to identify 50% of key words. If a hearing-impaired person requires an SNR of 8 dB to correctly understand 50% of key words, his/her SNR loss will be 6 dB, which corresponds to the increase from the average normal hearing person.

The QuickSIN™ speech material contains eight blocks of sentences in noise (4-talker babble noise). Different blocks allow the clinician to perform either basic SNR loss testing, or more specific tests on patients with ski-slope hearing loss, or test to verify the usefulness of hearing aids directional microphones. For more information, please refer to Etymotic Research’s QuickSIN™ Speech-in-Noise Test manual, version 1.3.