Music-in-Noise Testing is More Sensitive Than Hearing-in-Noise Testing

A. Musical Score showing example musical phrases and changes in the MINT test.
Subjects with higher musical aptitude scores (>35/40) performed better on both the HINT
(B) and the MINT (C) tests. Interestingly, the MINT test was sensitive
to lower signal- to-noise (SNR) ratios.

We compared the hearing-in-noise ability of subjects with and without a music degree . Music aptitude was measured with the Tonal Imagery section of Edwin Gordon's Musical Aptitude Profile (MAP), and subjects were separated into High-MAP and Low-MAP categories. Subjects performed a Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) with speech signals and a Music in Noise Test (MINT) with musical phrases. Interestingly, musical phrases could be discerned at a lower signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio than speech signals. Subjects with higher MAP scores (35-40) performed better on both the HINT and MINT tests than those with lower musical aptitude.

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