It may be common knowledge that cupping your hand around your ear can help to amplify sounds, making speech more intelligible or making a distant whisper just a little louder, but what does the hand do to the ear to make it easier to hear these sounds?
Using a Brüel & Kjær head and torso simulator with in-ear microphones and realistic pinna we were able to mimic the cupping of a real ear to measure the effects. With NTi’s FX100 Audio Analyser and RT-MicFX software we generated a sine sweep through a loudspeaker from 50Hz-20kHz, the response of which was measured using the in-ear microphones of the HATS.
We first took a measurement of the response of the HATS without the ears, and then with them, to see the amplification provided by a normal un-cupped ear and pinna. This can be seen on the graph below as the difference between the blue and red plots, with the majority of amplification coming from the natural resonance of the ear canal around 3kHz.
We then took 10 consecutive measurements while cupping the ear, firmly pushing against the side of the head to block any gaps. The hand was placed perpendicular to the head, pushing the ear outwards to be at a wider angle than normal. Multiple measurements were carried out as even slight changes to the hand placement changed the amount of amplification provided, and the frequency range of which it was effective.
Click on the graph below to see an interactive version via Plot.ly.
The majority of amplification provided by a cupped hand is between 1 and 2kHz, while also boosting the already sensitive frequency range around 3kHz. Between 300Hz and 1kHz a 3dB increase is seen, rising to 10dB up to 2kHz. In the higher frequency range there is a greater variation in amplification between measurements, but on average at least +3dB is seen.
By boosting frequencies between 1kHz and 4kHz, combined with varying levels of amplification above 5kHz, the cupping of the ear is likely to improve speech intelligibility, making it easier to understand speech at a distance or at low levels.
Try it for yourself and see!
John Drummond
19 June 2014 at 4:59 pm
Cupping your hand to help hearing loss is a great sign that additional help is needed with hearing. What do you all think has the best acoustics for hearing aids in today’s age?
Lee Davison
24 June 2014 at 8:13 am
Hi John,
Unfortunately we don’t have a huge amount of experience with hearing aids as it’s not our area of expertise. We are trained audiometrists, but we are mainly equipped for industrial audiometry gigs. It’s certainly interesting how hearing aids are evolving though, and it’s perhaps something we can look into in the future as an area of research.
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David de Neufville
7 March 2017 at 3:41 am
We can assume that using the cupped hand to improve hearing had no influence on the evolution of the hand. Therefore, it would seem reasonable to assume that a scientifically designed device could be an improvement over the cupped hand. No such device exists. Why?? I am familiar with Ear Glasses.
David de Neufville
26 July 2024 at 9:02 pm
Today, July 26, 2024, I ask the same question.
Daniel Polley
16 May 2017 at 6:50 pm
Thanks for posting this. Have you measured how cupping one’s hand behind their ear affects speech in noise recognition thresholds? Or do you know of a study that contrasted speech in noise thresholds with and without cupping? Would be interesting to see how the acoustic difference you describe here translates into a “real world” communication problem.
Marian scott
22 August 2018 at 8:56 pm
I would love to wear a pair of shell like large external ears, something more ecoustic than fleshy hand. Like glasses they would signal Im deaf and look like charming flowers. Lets invent them.
Rosalie Uchanski
6 February 2019 at 4:27 pm
Almost 20 years ago, two Washington University in St Louis audiology students did projects on the acoustic gain AND perceptual benefit of the ‘cupped hand’ (an artificial one: a surgical glove filled with foam/clay). Acoustic gain, measured with a Kemar mannequin, was similar in pattern to the results here, but smaller in magnitude (~10 dB in the 1-2 kHz region, compared to the 15 dB gain reported above). Perceptual gain was assessed using the QUICK-SIN speech test, with spatially-separated speech & noise (speech at 45 degrees, noise at 135 degrees). On average, a 3.5 dB benefit was found for the cupped-hand condition compared to the unaided (no ‘cupped hand’), natural pinna condition, for 15 young adults with normal hearing. When listening to words in sentences with context, a 3.5 dB SNR benefit could lead to an improvement in word understanding of ~20 percentage points.