Patent ID: 8437486

Claim:
An automated, self-contained calibrated hearing-aid tuning appliance comprising: a hearing-aid interface for programmatically coupling with a hearing aid worn by a user, said hearing aid having a plurality of programmatically adjustable settings; a calibrated audio output subsystem including: an audio interface, an audio amplifier, and a calibrated electro-acoustic transducer, said calibrated audio output subsystem being capable of consistently propagating sound waves having frequency response, sound pressure level, and distortion characteristics within predetermined tolerances; a memory storing a plurality of pre-recorded sound files and a plurality of programming instructions for heuristically tuning said hearing-aid; and a CPU interface for communicatively coupling with a central processing unit, including communicating said plurality of programming instructions to said central processing unit for execution, the appliance being thereby operative to: automatically select at least one of said pre-recorded sound files; automatically reproduce said selected at least one of said pre-recorded sound files via said calibrated audio output subsystem; collect feedback from said user based on said reproduced at least one of said pre-recorded sound files; and automatically programmatically adjust at least one of said plurality of programmatically adjustable settings based at least in part on said collected feedback from said user.