11 ms·

I could not hear anyone in any crowded situation. At middle age I thought my hearing was leaving. Yet every audiologist I went to said my hearing was fine. So

• ceejayoz 2y ago
  I've got a similar thing; I can't pull most song lyrics out of the song, and any significant amount of background noise means lip reading for me. Hearing's all fine, it's the processing that doesn't work quite right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
  • pavel_lishin 2y ago
    Ditto here. An audiologist recommended something called LACE therapy, but it wasn't cheap so at the time I didn't go for it - I need to look into it, and see if it's a legitimate treatment for this, or snake-oil.
    • 1123581321 2y ago
      I would not say it's snake oil, but it will only help if you've learned some helplessness or are bad at thinking about what someone is saying while they are speaking. A hearing aid or filter is always going to be more helpful if you only can pick one treatment.
      • pavel_lishin 2y ago
        But that's the thing, I'm in the similar position to others in the chain - last week, an audiologist said my hearing was tremendously good. But if there's noise around me, I cannot process what people are saying. I'm not sure what you mean by "only if you've learned some helplessness." I'm not a complete idiot, I can generally guess what someone is saying based on context, but if I'm having a conversation with Group A in a loud environment, and someone from group B turns to me and says something, I don't have much context as to what they're saying. (Also, a PSA: if someone who didn't hear you says, "what", or "can you say that again?", don't just repeat the last three words you said. Please repeat the entire sentence. I know that usually, the last few words provide enough context to reconstruct the sentence, but if you just tell me "this Sunday?" it's usually not enough, you have to just say, "Are you still planning on reconfiguring the encambulator this Sunday?")
        • simmons 2y ago
          > if someone who didn't hear you says, "what", or "can you say that again?", don't just repeat the last three words you said. My pet peeve about asking people to repeat isn't that they won't repeat enough, but that they'll repeat in exact the same volume and enunciation as they originally spoke. I'm not sure why they expect to do the same thing again and get different results. The only thing that I've found that works is to tell them what it sounds like they said, no matter how crazy ("Did you say, 'the elephant is painting the room'?") and only then will they speak loud and clear. (Which I'm sure is annoying for the other person, but what else am I to do?)
        • jwagenet 2y ago
          The parent poster’s word choice was perhaps uncharitable, but my read is helplessness is not equitable to idiocy. To me, it’s more the difference between actively trying to understand the conversation vs letting it tune out as a default. I find that I have trouble focusing on one conversation if others are happening around me, but that has much to do with where my focus lies as my brain being overwhelmed.
          • 2y ago
    • fouc 2y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40525260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40525260
  • nosecreek 2y ago
    Interesting. I suspect I may have the same thing. I also have poor vision without glasses, and I’ve always found that when I go swimming (and can’t wear my glasses) my hearing also gets significantly worse. Or at least the cocktail party problem gets worse, as my brain seems to get overwhelmed by every single background noise. I think some of this is explained by many indoor pools being big echoey spaces, but it still happens at outdoor pools as well. I suspect that when one sense (sight) is degraded, my brain tries to compensate by focusing on another sense (hearing), and the end result is even worse due to APD.
  • dekhn 2y ago
    This is why I turn on closed captioning even when I'm watching alone with headphones on.
• vidarh 2y ago
  I resorted to wearing earplugs for several years when I was going out more. I felt it did very little to reduce my ability to hear conversations, and it made the whole experience overall so much more pleasant.
  • 0_____0 2y ago
    If the SNR is already low enough that you're having issues discerning speech, lowering the volume won't help.
    • cs02rm0 2y ago
      It won't help you discern speech, but it'll stop your ears ringing.
      • pc86 2y ago
        Except it absolutely will help you discern speech. The sound blocking is not uniform across all frequencies and most speech is not blocked very well. So earplugs will make speech 20% quieter but will also make all the nonsense going on around you 70% quieter. So the speech will be easier to hear assuming you don't have $3 Wish earplugs.
    • LeifCarrotson 2y ago
      Lowering the volume can help with the SNR, because neither the signal, the noise, nor the lowering effect caused by earplugs are consistent with respect to frequency. Highly objectionable, harsh 4-8 kHz noise that might echo around a concrete and steel venue is blocked well by good earplugs, while low-frequency 100-400 Hz speech is ineffectively blocked.
      • kk6mrp 2y ago
        Do you have a good earplug recommendation?
        • 2y ago
• mozman 2y ago
  I don’t go to bars very often anymore but I absolutely detest live music. I go with friends to talk. Not to have loud music prevent a conversation.
  • wintermutestwin 2y ago
    Ironically, I think most of my hearing loss is from people trying to talk to me while I was listening to a band. If the band is playing zip it!
    • Aeolun 2y ago
      Dunno whether you really need more than your hands to communicate when listening to a band in that situation. At least until you get to more than 10 people that need a beer.
• wanderingstan 2y ago
  > ...restaurant and public space designers have stopped thinking about sound. Theory: The bars and restaurants want young patrons, so the poor acoustics are a selection mechanism. Only young people can converse there, so older folks stay away. The place gets reputation as “young and hip.” Whether by conscious design or “natural selection” for establishments, this seems to be the case.
  • RhysU 2y ago
    Designers for bars and clubs will take the clientele into account in subtle sensory ways. One once told me how he designed a club known to cater to those having trysts-- it had many isolated booths where the lighting prevented seeing into the booths from the main areas.
    • kdfjgbdfkjgb 2y ago
      the club was already known for that before it was designed?
      • RhysU 2y ago
        Sorry, redesigned or a second spot. I forget the details.
  • nomat 2y ago
    have seen this at many house parties. The young people gravitate towards the noise while the older ones clump up around the periphery
• RobotToaster 2y ago
  Auditory processing disorder?
• floatrock 2y ago
  > restaurant and public space designers have stopped thinking about sound. Most bars opened in the last 15 years have cement floors, very little sound insulation, and they’re based on the idea that you’re not having a good time unless your ears are ringing. Recently listened to a really good podcast about this phenomenon https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gastropod/id918896288?i=1000655586864 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gastropod/id918896288?... (or pick your favorite podcast app) Couple takeaways I remember: - "Silence is the new luxury" -- restaurants can have good sound design, but it doesn't come cheap. Upscale restaurants are starting to differentiate themselves with sound design - The modern clean aesthetic (glass, concrete, stainless steel, minimalism) promotes loud, echo'ey spaces - "You're not having a good time unless your ears are ringing" was an intentional design choice popularized by some restaurant guru in the 90's. Growing awareness of the problems is starting to create a backlash - Loud restaurants are damaging for the waitstaff's health. You can work for hours in an environment so loud that OSHA would demand hearing protection. - The luxury sound design studios can be so good at isolating ambient noise that they also sell an "anti-noise-cancelling" sound system that actually selectively re-amplifies crowd noise for when you do want to tune up some sense of busy-ness (with too much sound dampening in an unfilled room, it starts to feel too isolated... being "out and about" is some of the reason people go out dining)
  • countvonbalzac 2y ago
    Aren't there some cheap ways to muffle sound? Wood floors, rugs, curtains, artwork, acoustic panels, etc.
    • abeisgreat 2y ago
      There definitely are but, perhaps by definition, items soft enough to dampen sound are often easily damaged so they aren’t great fits for most commercial locations. They are also out of vogue as was mentioned, unless you’re a coffee shop then these “cozy” items just aren’t as common right now.
    • dingnuts 2y ago
      yes, really any soft surfaces will damp[0] (not "dampen") sound, but the techniques and materials can get very advanced (and expensive, and effective) 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping
• UI_at_80x24 2y ago
  Not to act like an arm-chair doctor but have you ever considered that you may be on the ASD spectrum? That function of being able to mentally 'filter out' specific voices within a crowd is (semi?) common signal of autism. More accurately; I'm like that and I am autistic, I've read that it happens to a lot of others.
  • kayodelycaon 2y ago
    It can also happen with ADHD. I seem to have difficulty integrating sensory information and thinking at the same time. If it’s noisy, it causes a series of buffer overflows at every level of cognition.
    • mrandish 2y ago
      Yep, I have ADHD and have always needed to put more effort toward parsing a particular sound in a dense sound field than other people. I've also always had trouble quickly identifying a particular object in a dense visual field. My wife jokes I'm "the world's worst 'Where's Waldo' player". I can still manage to do these things but it takes longer, requires more effort and I'm generally never as good at it as others seem to be. I've always suspected these two things are related to each other and to my ADHD. There's a related audio issue I suspect is also tied to ADHD. When I'm mentally focused on a task, if someone interrupts me, I often miss the first couple words they say. Fortunately, when it happens I can usually derive the missing context from the rest of the content. Interestingly, it's not that I didn't hear the sound of the words, it feels more like a lag in mental context switching to parse the sounds into meaning.
      • kayodelycaon 2y ago
        > I've also always had trouble quickly identifying a particular object in a dense visual field. I never considered ADHD affecting my visual processing but it very well could be. > Interestingly, it's not that I didn't hear the sound of the words, it feels more like a lag in mental context switching to parse the sounds into meaning. Happens to me all the time, I'm listening but sometimes my brain blips. I hear the words, but I no longer remember them by the time I'm trying to understand them.
• micromacrofoot 2y ago
  The one thing that annoys me about restaurants and other crowded places... is the insistence on playing music to attempt(?) to cover the sound! I simply don't understand it, why the hell would I want a noisy place where I can barely hear anyone to have MORE noise!? it's not even good quality noise, it's usually top 40 from 10 years ago being blasted over shit speakers.
• exe34 2y ago
  I patronize them - from a distance.
• j33zusjuice 2y ago
  Have you tried earplugs like Loop or Eargasm? I’ve considered them for a while, but never pulled the trigger. Reddit seemed to prefer Loops to Eargasms. I actually find foam earplugs make voices easier to hear. I can have conversations during concerts with them somehow, in fact. So I figure if foam earplugs can do that for me, then earplugs designed to block only unwanted noise are probably even better. Case in point, I was recently at a Swans concert—-they play very long sets, like 3 hours—-and my back got tight, so I started stretching. I heard someone 20 ft away talking shit! They said, “yeah, I guess you can do your Pilates here.” I finished the stretch and then heard, “oh, I guess he was just stretching.”
• treflop 2y ago
  There’s something called Auditory Processing Disorder where you are not able to able to differentiate sound and it supposedly can develop later in life. I’ve had it since I was a kid because I always passed the hearing tests but every other kid had no trouble listening to music and understanding the words and so on so I put two and two together. Anyway, I have never been able to understand anyone in any loud public space which absolutely blows when you’re not a home body. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder
  • simmons 2y ago
    Thank you for the name of this disorder and link! I've also had this my whole life, and I knew it was a thing that wasn't terribly rare (based on reading comments from others in the past, here on HN and elsewhere), but I think this is the first time I've seen a name for this condition. The Wikipedia page seems to really describe my condition, except for the potential overlap with ADHD. For example, the "difficulty following oral instructions". I can read something and retain it forever, but if someone speaks to me, it will often go in one ear and out the other. I sometimes wonder if this could be a result of being a very introverted child who started reading at around 3 or 4 years old. (Because reading is so awesome, why bother listening to people -- and improving your auditory neurology -- after that?) I think I've probably just adapted to the condition. It doesn't seem like any sort of problem or disability. But I suspect others around me find it much more annoying than I do. ;)
    • albert_e 2y ago
      One thing I feel in my personal experience -- while I am doing something -- inability to switch attention to someone speaking to me if they do not first ask for my attention (excuse me / hello / myname / cough / knock) before diving into speaking in sentences. very often by the time i start paying attention to them speaking -- they are 4-5 words into their sentence and I have missed the context of what they are talking about and i have to ask them to stop and repeat from start This has happened with me in multiple settings (work and personal life) Not sure if this is a common thing along with APD - which i recognize some symptoms of in myself
• MisterBastahrd 2y ago
  I'm one of those annoying ADHD people who will hear everything you're saying, ask "What?," and then a second later I've finished processing the audio in my head and am ready to continue the conversation. Similarly, I can't readily differentiate voices from melody in songs. Far too many songs don't have strong enough vocal tracks and the songs might as well just be mud to me. I suppose it's why I gravitated towards rap and R&B growing up.
  • follower 2y ago
    > [...] ADHD people who will hear everything you're saying, ask "What?," and then a second later I've finished processing the audio in my head and am ready to continue the conversation. You know, until you mentioned it, I'd never thought that that experience might have an ADHD-related component to it. Interesting.
• instagib 2y ago
  My hearing aids have a custom directional hearing section I can modify. I’ll give this a try next time I’m in a crowded area.
• s0rce 2y ago
  There are some restaurants we don't often go to because they are too loud to be enjoyable. Luckily its patio weather most of the year here in California so eating outside is generally much quieter and enjoyable. I also have trouble discerning sounds in crowded spaces. Thanks for sharing your diagnosis, really interesting to think about.
• doctorwho42 2y ago
  I am like you, I have extremely sensitive hearing. My solution to this problem is to carry on my keychain a pair of concert rated hearing protection earbuds. It's not a perfect solution, but you'd be surprised at how helpful it is to have some highs and lows filtered out. Only downside beyond not being perfect, is people tend to think I put them in to block sound entirely. So I usually end up fielding questions about what they are, with a resulting 'man that's a smart idea' Ymmv
• pmarreck 2y ago
  I can’t find the article now but I read that there’s actually 2 kinds of deafness, auditory deafness and signal processing deafness. Not sure if audiologists phoning it in will know how to test for the latter
• loceng 2y ago
  I'll first ask the question of do you remember if you had any ear infections as a child - and were they painful at all? It sounds like that audiologist still wasn't specialized enough - otherwise I feel like your story would have extended differently; high demand mainstream audiologists, including the mainstream audiologist profession, don't seem to have a certain lineage of knowledge that I dramatically benefit from first when I was 23 (now 41), when I was in essentially a high-functioning Asperger's state - to where my hearing had devolved into a hyperacusis state - a severe hypersensitivity to sound - but where prior to that I had the same symptoms of difficulty with conversation, and busy rooms with lots of noise was extremely mentally draining-fatiguing, not realizing it was putting my mind on overdrive drying to actively focus and hone in on sounds vs. it autonomously happening. Have you ever heard of Berard AIT (Auditory Integration Training/Therapy) or the Tomatis method? There's a book on the sound therapies called "Hearing Equals Behavior: Updated and Expanded." There's a non-standard audiogram to check for imbalances in the hearing. The standard audiogram is they just pick say 30 Dbs volume and check various frequencies in each ear at that frequency, and if you can hear that - then "great!" The non-standard audiogram checking for imbalances checks for HOW LOW-QUIET of a sound you can hear at different frequencies, and interestingly, with 100% accuracy you can predict a set of behaviours that a person will have if they have an imbalance at certain frequencies like 1000 Hz; not all frequencies have associated behaviours with them. An example of an imbalance would be if at 1000 Hz in your left ear the lowest sound you could hear was 15 Dbs, but in right ear you could hear at 10 Dbs - an imbalance of 5 Dbs, but where the idea is that the body-brain-mind is a system of finding homeostasis and equilibrium, so it should be able to have it so sounds are heard at the same level - evenly, save for actual physical damage. This is just a simple example and there can be high peaks and valleys that show up in the non-standard audiogram. I have a similar story as yours. My issues with sound were almost identified in Grade 2 when going from a kindergarten setting, where there were no real performance or attention expectations, to Grade 2. The teacher noted I was having trouble paying attention. They thought maybe I had hearing issues, it was a private school and so they brought in an audiologist. My hearing was fantastic! So indeed, unfortunately, 30+ years ago especially they didn't consider that my hearing could be "too good" - where sound was overwhelming me; so I was hypersensitive to sound, arguably hyposensitive to touch and other senses, and it was medications in my late teens and early 20s that caused my hearing to get super hypersensitive - to the point where I was in what I consider a torture state for 8 months - where even the sound of blinking was painful, or at least that was the sensory I was associating the pain with - until I was forced to do my own research and eventually stumbled into Berard AIT. There's also pre-care questionnaires that some practitioners offer - a checklist for behaviour of a child, and also of an adult, where I had ~80% of the behaviours both as a child and as an adult, e.g. preferred to sit in the back or corner of a classroom, essentially as there'd be less directions noise would be coming from, had trouble relaying a story or following instructions, etc. Adult checklist: https://www.aithelps.com/auditory_care_adults.php https://www.aithelps.com/auditory_care_adults.php Child checklist: https://www.aithelps.com/auditory_care.php https://www.aithelps.com/auditory_care.php NOTE: these places started offering "home programs" to send some audio equipment and the specially modified music, however I won't personally trust them until I've had the chance to do what I'd consider to be thoroughly done research to compare the original high-quality sound equipment that would produce the absolute highest quality of frequencies vs. what the rentable-shippable equipment produces. Someday I need to write a chapter of a book or perhaps a whole book on my experiences of it all - the before and after state, the blocked development process (e.g. autistic state) that got unblocked and the development process that began to unlock - essentially I was blocked from processing emotions properly, so I arguably had a lifelong backlog of unprocessed memories with emotions associated with them needing to be labeled to be organized, as well as PTSD from many very intense traumatic years.
• victor106 2y ago
  > I could hear so well I was unable to differentiate sound; my hearing hadn’t gotten worse, my brain’s ability to separate sound had. Is there a name for this condition?
  • onemoresoop 2y ago
    Auditory processing disorder (APD)
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Stratoscope 2y ago
  Related: https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/bay-area-restaurants-sensory-nightmare-18459785.php https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/bay-area-restaurants-sen...
• dakial1 2y ago
  I share the same trait. Thought I was going deaf as I couldn’t hear people talking at crowded places but my hearing tests always return ok. Great to know I’m not alone at this. I’m not from the US but I visit often and could not understand this trend of party restaurants where you eat at club level sound blasting all around you. It’s the worst of both worlds, since you can’t talk with the loud music nor can dance since you’re sitting down. Paraphrasing the great Donald Glover, I’m too old for this $hit!
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• interludead 2y ago
  Having exceptional hearing that's almost too good, causing difficulty in sound differentiation. Haven't know that it was possible. Intriguing story
• fouc 2y ago
  In neuroplasticity, the saying "nerves that fire together wire together" means that when neurons are activated simultaneously, their connections become stronger. If your life is filled with constant background noise, it can make your brain's ability to distinguish specific sounds less precise. To improve your auditory discrimination, it is helpful to spend time listening to clear, distinct sounds, such as slow classical music. This practice helps to refine and strengthen the neural pathways associated with each sound, enhancing your ability to differentiate between them over time.