Listen to the sounds of mrmphmphrm

[outsidetheparty]

More and more often these days I'm noticing that in crowd situations -- parties or loud restaurants or public spaces -- I can only hear about half of what anyone is saying. It feels a little bit like being a foreign exchange student with a limited vocabulary: I can usually get the gist of the conversation by backtracking from the words I do catch and filling in the blanks, or by waiting for someone to say something that'll fill in whatever context I missed. But it makes it really difficult to participate in the conversation, as opposed to just sitting there watching it: by the time I've figured out what people are talking about, they've moved on to the next subject and I'm lost again. Someone'll make a joke and I'm just sitting there with a blank look on my face while I try to figure out what it was.

We also have lots of conversations at home which go like this:

A: [statement]
B: What?
A: [statement]
[pause]
B: What?
A: [STATEMENT!]
B: response
A: What?
B: [RESPONSE!]

...and so on. I always wrote that off to the fact that we're both kind of low talkers, but I'm starting to wonder if there isn't more to it than that.

I have an audiogram from a few years ago which shows "mild loss (30dB at 500Hz, 40dB at 1000Hz) bilaterally" -- which, conveniently, seems to be smack in the middle of the pitch range for human speech -- so I know this isn't all in my head. Well, strictly speaking it literally is in my head, I guess. But at the time the doctor sort of laughed it off, made some joke about spouses never listening to each other anyway, so I figured it wasn't enough loss to be concerned about.

I guess this whole post is boiling down to: Hey, bayleaf, whaddya think? Is it hearing aid time? Or would that just make the crowd noise louder instead of helping me understand the conversation?

Comments

[bayleaf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I know I looked at this audio several years ago, but I don't remember it in detail. Um. I'd say get another audio, in part to see if your hearing is stable or if the hearing loss is progressing. When I make a recommendation for hearing aids I base it on a combination of severity (so, where the threshold of hearing is or the softest level you can hear) and how many/which pitches are affected. I most likely wouldn't recommend a hearing aid for a very severe loss that was isolated to only one frequency, but I might for a very mild hearing loss that affected many frequencies.

Even mild, relatively contained hearing losses can have a huge impact on speech understanding in adverse listening conditions. Normal hearing people (assuming they also have normal auditory processing) can converse in environments with -3 signal-to-noise ratio, whereas people who have even a very mild hearing loss require an SNR closer to +7.

For you, if the loss only affects 500 Hz and 1000 Hz, you aren't an ideal hearing aid candidate but it might be possible to fit you with something if the loss is significantly affecting your life. Your first step is definitely to get a new audiogram, and then base any decisions off that. Email it to me at (all one word) 'first initial real last name' at gmail dot com and I'll be happy to consult over the phone. :)

[outsidetheparty.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'd forgotten I'd already asked you about that back when I had the tests done. :)

I keep going back and forth on whether it's a real effect or if I'm just not paying enough attention when people are talking... but thanks for the extra info -- I'll probably bug you again after I next see a doctor.

[ellinor.livejournal.com]

I had a similar realization in high school, when I was doing a lot of very loud activities (years of sitting right in front of the cymbals in band and orchestra will do that(!)), and started learning very rudimentary lip-reading, because I thought it was the beginning of the sort of hearing loss that has (by now) made my mother essentially deaf, but for technology. Fortunately, my hearing plateaued, and my cognition with whatever relatively small loss I had seems to have improved over the last couple of years as I have been in quieter environments and given my poor little hair cells a break.

But the moral of the story is, now I have this very low-level ability to read lips, based on watching a lipreading video and watching a bunch of TV with the sound way down and the closed captioning on. It has served me very well in the crowded cocktail party environment. Even if your hearing flattens out and stays where it is, it probably couldn't hurt to learn a little.

And either way, I wish you the best!

[outsidetheparty.livejournal.com]

I used to love standing right in front of the speakers at clubs, where you could literally feel the bass line thumping in your chest -- there's a teensy weensy possibility I'm paying for that now :)

[porcupinemoon.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem (was in a band and loved loud concerts).. ugh. :( I have the most trouble with certain frequencies (occasionally yours, outsidetheparty, since you have such a lovely deep voice!). Sometimes it gets embarassing saying "WHAT?", but I've gotten ok at guessing from context or the sounds. Some of my friends mumble and that sucks.. oh well. Good luck :( I wear earplugs now at concerts but some damage is already done.