The relationship between consonant recognition under conditions of acoustic filtering and hearing loss was studied in subjects with unilateral hearing impairments. Using a procedure involving suprathreshold loudness balance between ears, a multifilter was used to match the (suprathreshold) audiometric configuration of the impaired ear. Consonant recognition data were obtained from the impaired ear and from the normal ear listening through the multifilter. To the extent that consonant recognition was similar in the two ears, the effect of the patient's hearing impairment on phoneme identification could be related to the audiometric configuration. A comparison between consonant recognition scores for the impaired ears and for the ears listening through the multifilter revealed large individual differences among subjects. These differences appeared related, in part, to the audiometric configuration. Mean consonant recognition ability, however, was almost always lower in the paired ear. In general, the more flat the audiometric configuration, the more dissimilar the consonant recognition between the two ears.