Gain requirements of conductive hearing losses.

Individuals with significant air-bone gap were presumed to need the gain used by sensori-neural hearing losses, plus one-fifth of the air-bone gap. The amount of operating gain used by 76 conductive and mixed hearing losses was found to closely approximate the predicted amount, but there were large individual differences. As was expected, a gradual increase in gain was used as the size of the air-bone gap increased. There appeared to be minimal relationship between operating gain differences and the air conduction pure-tone threshold pattern, but some relationship to the underlying conductive pathology.