Seminars on Audition – Music, Hearing Aids, and Research

This Seminar on Audition Preconference of the CAA serves two purposes-
The morning session will be by Dr. Mead Killion, the designer of the world’s first hearing aid designed specifically for musicians. Dr. Killion will be discussing the various requirements and technical aspects of what defines an optimal hearing aid for the listening and playing of music.
The afternoon session is comprised of three speakers representing three different laboratories that are designed to be able to assess and evaluate new hearing aid technologies before being brought to the market. This includes Dr. Frank Russo of Ryerson University with the SmartLab, Dr. Susan Scollie of the National Centre for Audiology at Western Ontario, and Dr. Dan Bosniak of McMaster University with the LiveLab. The speakers will overview how modern hearing aid assessment and evaluation is performed in these independent laboratories.

Learning Objectives:
After attending this seminar, the participant should be able to:
1. Select software programming that is optimized for music.
2. Explain the engineering limitations of most modern hearing aids for music.
3. Identify some simple clinical strategies to improve a hearing aid for music.
4. Identify characteristics of assessment and evaluation programs.