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A Summary of the independent study of the Quantum EVO BTE at the University of Oldenburg in Germany.

Introduction: A study of the Quantum EVO was recently completed at the Hearing Center at the University of Oldenburg in Oldenburg Germany. The goals of the study were:

  1. Determine the effectiveness of Interton's proprietary fitting algorithm Dynagraph in the field.
  2. Compare the performance of the EVO with that of the users own hearing aids.
  3. Define the prferred SMS ( Speech Management System) settings for 5 different listening environments in the lab and in the field.
  4. Evaluate speech intelligibility at the preferred settings for each of the listening environments.

Overview of Method: 20 hearing impaired listeners participated, falling into gradually sloping, steeply sloping and flat catagories. Subjects were tested 8 times n the lab and wore the EVO in the field for a period of at least 8 weeks. Tests included a variety of questionaires dealing with both the subjects own hearing aids and the EVO, an assessment of the amount of fine tuning of the EVO necessary to achieve a final fit, and a series of paired comparisons anong SMS settings to arrive at preferred settings for each of the 5 listening environments. Once preferred settings were determined, speech in noise testing was conducted to evaluate whether noise attenuation would affect speech in noise performance. Throughout testing, subjects kept journals detailing their listening experiences with the EVO.

Summary of Results:

  1. When initially fit with the EVO, subjective ratings of speech intelligibility were quite high in quiet, outdoors and in cafeteria settings.
  2. Listening comfort in those settings were also rated quite high.
  3. measures of loudness (including own voice) were found to be quite comfortable in a variety of settings.
  4. Ratings for qualities such as unnatural, dull, sharp, tinny, scratchy etc were all rated low.
  5. Overall impression scores were quite high.
  6. Ratings on all the above measures improved from the first weeks use to the end of the study.
  7. The amount of fine tuning necessary (re: the initial Autofit to Dynagraph) to achieve a final successful fit was quite small.
  8. Dr. Fit was found to be an effective tool for making fine tuning adjustments.

2 out of 3 patients preferred the Interton EVO aids to their own hearing aids.

Subjects owned aids consisting of a variety of high tech digital products including:

  • Phonak
  • Claro
  • Siemens
  • Triano, Prisma, Signia
  • Widex
  • Senso
  • Resound
  • Canta

The EVO has proven itself as a competitor in the "high end" digital class.

SMS default settings were origanally based on listening to noise alone, rather than speech mixed with noise. Comments from the field indicated that these default settings for SMS provided too much attenuation in the real world. The default SMS settings needed to be lowered in the software. This study has resulted in a change to the default settings of SMS in the quick select memory settings of EVO and Staris in Interton's Compufit version 3.6. As a comfort feature SMS performs flawlessly, and that is what should be stressed to the customer.

Conclusion: There are 3 main highlights to the study. These are as follows:

  1. The initial impression of the Quantum EVO when fit using Dynagraph is quite high.
  2. The amount of fine tuning necassary to achieve a final successful fitting is quite low.
  3. The Quantum EVO performed quite well against a variety of competitor's products, subjectively outperforming them in a variety of listening environments.

Comments from users:

  • "The speech understanding and the sound is more natural with EVO plus."
  • "Marvelous. The aids were worn all day long. It's a drastic improvement over my own hearing aid."
  • "The family says that communication is much better than before."
  • When watching TV or movies in a large group, if I opened a window to the main street I could not understand anything with my own hearing aids. It was strenuous, and could not tell the direction of the speaker. Now I can hear everyone again."

Contact Mark Glassman, and the team at Glassman's Hearing Aid Service.





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Ph. 402-727-7866

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