Don't worry, when we first entered the world of hearing loss we didn't know what the heck a speech banana was either....
In short-the speech banana, and above, is our GOAL. As we mentioned before, AJ has profound loss so without aids, he hears around 100-110 dB. With his hearing aids, we've gotten consistent responses in the 70dB range. This makes sense, as he's always ripping his aids out when we are on the freeway and the windows are open. Can we say, semi trucks and loud wind? We think he can hear the low keys on the piano as well.
The link above is an illustration of the speech banana. The picture symbols represent the different sounds that can be heard at each level. For example, a tree's leaves rustling is very soft and high pitched, but a semi truck is very loud and low-pitched. In the middle of the chart are all of the speech sounds. They call it a banana because when you draw a line around the speech sounds, it makes the shape of a banana.