Revisions of the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) for Hearing Aids

Abstract

　　The Japanese Industrial Standard for hearing aids, JIS C 5512, published in 1966, has been revised 4 times to reflect technical advances in hearing aids and also to meet the revisions of corresponding international standards. Major changes in the latest revision in 2015 were as follows: The acoustic coupler used to measure the output sound pressure level (SPL) of hearing aids was changed to a 2-cm³ coupler. The high-frequency average (average of gain or output SPL at 1000 Hz, 1600 Hz and 2500 Hz) was adopted as a representative of the performance of a hearing aid. The definitions of reference test gain and reference test setting of gain control were changed. Measurement of the performance characteristics of hearing aids with automatic gain control (AGC) was specified. Some of the above changes seemed to originate from the need to make the IEC standard more compatible with the ANSI standard. In addition, a standard specifying particular requirements for the basic safety and essential performance of hearing aids and hearing aid systems (JIS T 0601-2-66), and a standard specifying methods for characterizing signal processing in hearing aids with a speech-like signal (JIS C 5516) were newly published.