A line of investigation which began with the limited purpose of comparing the discriminability of speech mechanically coupled to the ossicular chain with similar speech passed through hearing aids, led to an awareness that the manner in which speech discrimination formulations were conventionally utilized failed to take into account important electro acoustic variables. Pilot tests suggested that failure to account for these variables might be a prime factor in the continuing controversy regarding the precision of phonetically balanced monosyllablic word lists, the most widely used speech discrimination formulation. Attempts to systematically elucidate the relevant parameters were initially focused on the method of "equalizing" speech made dissimilar in speech peak to long term RMS level by amplitude distortion. Discrimination scores obtained by listeners from lists which had been equalized on the basis of their long term RMS level showed that this method was superior to conventional peak equalization methodologies in preserving the intrinsic discrimination superiority of less distorted speech.