Loudness Recruitment

Loudness recruitment is a common consequence of sensorineural hearing loss in which the range between 'just audible' and 'uncomfortably loud' sounds is compressed — quiet sounds are harder to hear, but sounds above threshold grow louder more rapidly than in a typical listener. The practical result is that simply amplifying all audio (as an early hearing aid would) can push speech from inaudible to uncomfortable without ever reaching intelligible. Modern hearing aids use frequency-dependent compression to compensate. In accessibility simulations, including recruitment (as opposed to flat attenuation) is important for conveying why hearing loss is not just 'everything is quieter' but 'the dynamic range of what you can comfortably hear is narrower'.