Written by William F. Carver, Ph.D., FAAA, FASHA, CCC(A)ret.

A little more about live voice vs. recorded testing. One of the major reasons that I hear from those who defend the practice of using live voice is that recorded tests take too long.  Typically, we use four seconds as the interstimulus interval.  This period of silence between stimuli appears to be sufficient for most people to hear the word, decide what it is and repeat it.  I have and I’m sure that most audiologists have, experienced extremely slow responders where even four seconds is inadequate. On the other hand, we experience the quick responders for whom a couple of seconds is sufficient.  Auditec has, therefore, produced recordings with shortened interstimulus intervals of 2.5 seconds.  I know of many audiologists who have taken advantage of these recordings quite successfully.  (For the occasional slow responder, one can employ the pause button on their playback device.)

Short interval recordings are available from Auditec, Inc.  See a sample comparison in the video below. The most popular version is the NU-6 Ordered by Difficulty Version II.