2022 NHCA Annual Virtual Conference

Preventing hearing injury while maintaining situational awareness is of critical importance to Soldiers and operational planners. As the modern military encounters a variety of complex situations, determining the optimal hearing protection device (HPD) in each case is a non-trivial task. Currently, only the Noise Reduction Rating (NRR) is used as a standard HPD specification; other important characteristics of advanced HPDs are not evaluated or reported in a standardized manner. Most HPD performance evaluation is done using human subjects, and commercially available HPDs present more options than can be reasonably evaluated. To address this challenge, a suite of quantitative, sensor-based tests to quickly, inexpensively, and comprehensively evaluate candidate HPDs is being developed for military use. The five tests consist of metrics regarding signal quality, sound localization, level-dependent frequency response, self-noise for active electronic devices, and impulse noise response. Electromechanical metric results will be correlated with human subject trials, which are still in early stages; however, preliminary results will be presented and compared with the complimentary electromechanical methods. An overview of the software tool under development for use by operational planners to select the optimal HPD for their missions will also be given.