The escalating cost of claims for Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) supports the need to review and upgrade current hearing conservation practices. The rise of these escalating costs and the need to protect the military personnel when training in extreme noise conditions has initiated an engineering investigation within the Department of National Defence (DND) and in collaboration with the University of Ottawa, to review the existing standards in the field of hearing protection test and evaluation, to propose technical recommendations and to identify the possible technical problems and gaps impacting the quality of the existing procedures. This study dealt with the estimation of the protection capability of Hearing Protection Devices (HPDs) in the case of high-level impulse noise from small firearms weapons that are a particularly damaging source of noise in military environments, representing an important cause of NIHL. Testing and evaluation based on a system engineering approach have been used in this work introducing: - A new testing approach, based on ANSI/ASA S12.42-2010, for testing HPDs when the impulse noise is generated by a small firearm; - A new evaluation approach for HPD performance, introducing a characterization approach using a sub-band analysis for dealing with impulse noise generated by a small firearm. The effectiveness of HPDs, taking into account the physiological human limitations induced by Bone Conduction (BC), is computed by using an innovative method attempting to better prevent the risk of NIHL when using small firearms.

Bakgrund: Finjusteringar av hörapparatens förstärkning görs för att validera förstärkningen. Patientens förmåga att kategorisera ljudbilden ligger till grund för de justeringar som görs. Syfte: Att utvärdera en praktiknära metod för finjustering av hörapparater. Metod: Deltagarna (N = 18) fick lyssna på och bedöma ljudbilden för ett talmaterial med slumpade nivåmodifieringar i oktavbandet 4 kHz. Försöksledaren korrigerade ljudbilden utifrån deltagarnas nivåbedömning, till dess att deltagarna upplevde att ljudbilden var naturlig. Deltagarna fick efter halva undersökningen, som intervention, lyssna på en genomgång som förklarade och jämförde de olika ljudbilderna. Resultat: Deltagarnas nivåbedömningar ledde till korrigeringar i oktavbandet som var statistiskt signifikanta, men en normalisering av oktavbandet uppnåddes inte. Efter genomgången kunde fler nivåmodifikationer korrigeras med en statistiskt signifikant skillnad. Nivåmodifikationer som kan kategoriseras som metalliska/skarpa ledde oftare till en statistiskt signifikant korrigering, än nivåmodifikationer som kan kategoriseras som otydliga/dova. Slutsatser: Om finjusteringar av hörapparaterna görs, bör audionomen ha klart för sig att det kan behövas större nivåförändringar i större frekvensband, för att patienten ska ha möjlighet att uppleva en skillnad i ljudbilden i en klinisk miljö. / Background: Fine-tuning of the hearing aid amplification is done to validate the amplification. The patient's ability to describe the sound quality lays as a foundation for the fine-tuning. Aim: To evaluate a practice-oriented method for fine-tuning hearing aids. Methods: The participants (N = 18) listened to and evaluated the sound quality for a speech-material with randomized level modifications in the octave band 4 kHz. The sound quality was adjusted according to the participants' evaluation, until a normalized sound quality was perceived by the participants. Halfway through the examination the participants, as an intervention, listened to a briefing which explained and compared differences in the different sound qualities. Results: The participants level evaluation led to adjustment in the octave band that was statistically significant, but a normalization of the octave band could not be achieved. After the briefing a larger number of level modifications were adjusted with a statistical significance. Level modifications which were categorized as metallic/sharp more often led to a statistically significant adjustment compared to level modifications categorized as unclear/dull. Conclusions: If fine-tuning of hearing aids is done, the audiologist should be aware that bigger level adjustment in broad bands might be needed, for the patient to be able to notice a difference in sound quality in a clinical setting.

The diploma thesis is focused on design and optimalization of digital octave and fraction-octave band filters. This thesis describe the behavior of filters in systems with fixed point arithmetics and investigate the impact of quantization coefficients for frequency response of filter. Filters, whitch has been designed, are implemented into simple software in C. Designed filters are in accordance with standard IEC 61260.