It sounds a few of you guys need a hearing test, not being able to hear conversation in a noisy environment is pretty typical.
Hearing aids will amplify the frequencies you struggle with- normally the high ones.
Good ones have directional mics that can be directed at the person talking automatically or with an app.

I have the same issue. Especially in Pubs and cafes etc with no acoustic deadening stuff like carpets and curtains in them I find theses places hard work where all the noise sounds the same.

I struggle with picking out voice on the smaller LCD TVs. I turn mine up and all. Hear is more harsh noise and still can’t pick out voices.

Spent my formative yrs on chainsaws, woodchippers etc and dj’ing in front of 1000watt monitors! Always wore hearing protection but contracting you were always too tight to buy decent or replace helmets/ hearing protection.

There was a similar thread on here a while back, it was an eye opener for me at the time as I always seemed to be the only one struggling to hear people talking in pubs and clubs etc. I’m sure when I looked into it more I came across a condition with a fancy name that was more about it being the brain not processing the sound correctly rather than it being hearing loss related – I can’t for the life of me find what the condition was called now though (it wasn’t Cochlear Synaptopathy).

It might have been Central Auditory Processing Disorder related but don’t remember it being such a mouthful as that – it was basically to do with humans have evolved the ability to distinguish speech as a separate type of sound to other noise hence why it doesn’t usually get lost in background noise (which is often louder) but in some people the ability isn’t very well developed.

It didn’t seem like there was a treatment though, so like others I can on nodding/smiling/looking dumb/hoping not to offend people when they’re talking to me in the pub…

aracer – Member
…So does anybody else suffer with this and is there anything I can do?

Me too. My solution in noisy environments is to grin vacuously and nod my head in response to facial clues. 🙂

Needless to say I avoid those sorts of places. I simply can’t distinguish words.

My kids used to reckon I have dog ears though – they would be conspiring in a room downstairs and I would be able to hear them while my wife couldn’t.

I had my hearing tested about 4 years ago – no problems showed up.

My wife hates my choices of music too and reckons I’m always a beat behind if I’m dancing. I wonder if there’s a relationship.

I think the problem is simply too many conflicting inputs.

So does anybody else suffer with this and is there anything I can do?

yes, and not sure, as that probably depends on whats causing it for you

I put mine down to being a bit ASD, like some have already said on this thread. Also sudden loud noises (my kids shouting, as they do) can be physically painful, OTOH I have generally good hearing and musically I can pick out individual things going on in complex pieces.

Yeah – I’m not too bad at that. Have just started playing in a band doing covers and surprised to find that I seem to do a better job of picking out bits from the original than most of the other guys (though unlike them I’ve not spent lots of years playing in loud bands, so my basic hearing is less damaged).

Could be ASD related I guess – I’m not massively afflicted with that, though like many here I’m sure I’m somewhere on the spectrum.

Carry on grinning vacuously and nodding it is then – though I’m tempted to try mentioning to people that I have trouble and see if that helps.

I can’t tell one note from another. Equally hopeless with accents.

However my party trick used to be the ability to tell what the valve clearances were on various old British motorbikes just by listening to them ride by and I could pick out various noises that no one else seemed to hear.

I could pick out various noises that no one else seemed to hear.

That can be a curse.

Definitely not all suffering from the same hearing problems then – I’m far from the most talented musician, but when on form (as I was at band practice last night 😀 ) I can play a bit of tune I’ve heard back first or second attempt.

Another +1, can’t hold any sort of conversation in a nightclub/party environment without someone shouting directly in my ear

molgrips – Member
‘I could pick out various noises that no one else seemed to hear.’
That can be a curse.

Especially if you’re Jeanne d’Arc… 🙂

I gave myself a hearing test whilst waiting for my turn at Specsavers. It said I was fine…it was just an automatic machine thing but I’m sure it errs on the side of caution to maximise the chance of selling me a hearing aid!

I’m much worse at this since I suffered a mild brain injury a few years ago.

Fuzzywuzzy has it, I read something about it a while back, and there is a certain condition to do with processing certain sounds in a background full of sounds of a similar frequency.
When it’s quiet, I can hear a spider pattering across my bedroom wall, which can cause my heart rate to go up a bit, I can tell you, and I can hear a mechanical wristwatch ticking a couple of feet away.
I can pick out subtle background details in recorded music, but when things are just random noise, then I’m stuffed!
Voice pitch has a lot to do with it, too.
Still, it gives me a perfectly good excuse to avoid clubs and noisy, crowded pubs…

Another here. My hearing’s tested annually at work and it’s fine but I haven’t a clue what people are chatting about in the pub. At night my watch has to go on the carpet! It gets louder at a certain point in a revolution (each minute I guess) and it bugs me. I can’t have it on the bedside or even the chest of drawers across the room.

Edit: and I don’t have a clue what most songs are about 🙁

@UrbanHiker

cocktail party syndrome

sort of. You’re mixing the cocktail party effect with this opposite problem of not being able to discriminate speech in a noisy environment.

Some random article describes how it works

This inability to discriminate between speech and surrounding noise is affected by several things.

If environmental effects are constant then on an individual basis hearing quality and available concentration have big effects. Throw in hard surfaces, angular construction, and ceiling speakers and it just gets harder.

Deafness of any level will affect your ability to discriminate different voices from the noise as the signal becomes less distinct. Asymmetric hearing, where one side is less sensitive than the other, will also affect how you can discriminate and how easily you can ‘focus’ your hearing. Stereo adds information for your brain to tease signal from noise. And any symptoms of tinnitus will have a similar effect. This ‘brain noise’ obscures any signals in the same range. All of these have a concomitant effect on the available concentration you have to first discriminate the kinds of sounds of speech and then decode them into meaning.

Having tinnitus, some high frequency deficit in one ear, and finding crowds, parties and noisy restaurants exhausting is a recipe for me sagely nodding my head and offering random expressions to appear like I have any clue of what’s going on in conversations.

Delete – linky no worky

Haven’t read the whole thread but saw OP and a couple of posts, thought I’d comment.

I have very good hearing, my wife is pretty much half deaf (currently seeing ENT consultant about it), she has no problem hearing what people are saying, I always seem have trouble, especially in busy places.

I get the impression it’s not just about your hearing, there’s a skill/knack/something that helps you decipher what’s being said that’s independent on the function of your hearing

Deafness of any level will affect your ability to discriminate different voices from the noise as the signal becomes less distinct. Asymmetric hearing, where one side is less sensitive than the other, will also affect how you can discriminate and how easily you can ‘focus’ your hearing. Stereo adds information for your brain to tease signal from noise. And any symptoms of tinnitus will have a similar effect. This ‘brain noise’ obscures any signals in the same range. All of these have a concomitant effect on the available concentration you have to first discriminate the kinds of sounds of speech and then decode them into meaning.

This ^ is massively relevant to me as someone with severely impaired hearing in one ear*, I find it difficulty not only to pick out speech against background, but also have issues with any kind of directionality. It’s also situation dependant for me based on the asterisk explanation below…

I often get to a point in noisy environments where it essentially turns to white noise and I’m left lip reading to fill int he blanks, fortunately I’ve been doing this since I was about 5 so most people who meet me don’t notice, but also my wife is very adept at putting herself on my deaf side when we are out to help me out (she knows to get my attention by touching me on the arm or shoulder before speaking), it forces most people to address me from the working side or face on which helps massively, otherwise I can quite happily have a conversation with someone directly opposite me and be almost completely oblivious to someone (trying) chatting away to me on the deaf side which can be quite embarrassing, and actually very hard work and stressful for me as I have to continually be aware of checking my deaf side to make sure I’m not being inadvertently rude!

* I no longer have two of the tiny bones in one ear that are responsible for transmitting sound from the ear drum inwards, not only does this affect the amount I can hear, but it also affects the frequency of sounds I can hear, from what I remember of various tests I have a big flat spot in the ‘normal’ human hearing zone, but am still sensitive to certain very low and high frequency sounds, which is particularly annoying at times as with my ‘bad’ ear I can hear the TV/other electricals on standby from well over a room away, but if someone is speaking to me in that room I’ll struggle to hear them, and I’m unlikely to be know what room they are actually in, or which floor of the house they’re on, which normally leads to me running around the house trying to work out where they are 😕

Another sufferer here, but it’s because my ears are super-sensitive and imbalanced.

Can hear really tiny sounds all the time and pinpoint it’s direction really well in quiet situations, especially outdoors. Except from directly behind me, so riders behind do tend to sneak up on me!
When in a busy pub I hear every sound going so really struggle to filter out voices, especially the higher (usually female) ones.

I’ve had hearing tests done and my range is very good, equivalent to someone 10-15 years younger than I am. The audiologist did say my ear shape is very efficient at picking up frontal sounds, which explains the sneaky rider problem, and that my left ear is nearly double the sensitivity of my right. My brain compensates normally until I get overloaded with sounds.

I’ve noticed I’m getting less sensitive after having a serious concussion incident two years ago though (unconscious for a minute or two!) but seeing as I’ve had a few of those already I wouldn’t recommend it as therapy 😆

e ear, and finding crowds, parties and noisy restaurants exhausting is a recipe for me sagely nodding my head and offering random expressions to appear like I have any clue of what’s going on in conversations.

Sounds familiar…
<snigger>

Went up to that Lunnon today, to move a daughter, she took us to what must be the noisiest restaurant I think I’ve ever been in, mostly loads of women of multiple languages chattering and having to speak louder and louder, lots of them talking over each other. I have exactly the same problem as the OP I expect it’s surfers ear, lots of us that spend hours on the water have it, so I’ve never done much about it, but today it was almost painful so I downloaded this noise app to my phone, it registered 94 decibels.
Then I checked the noise in the workplace recommendations, as you do when you’re bored and used to work in a business with machinery and they would come round and check, the result, their staff are at risk at that level, 2 hours is the recommended limit it seems. I insisted we eat up get the bill and leave once I’d managed to make myself heard. Handy little free app, can recommend it, not a lot they can do I guess at the restaurant, Lunnon’s like that horrid noisy place full up with, well just about everyone I guess all trying to be heard over the others, steer clear is my best advice and lip read when necessary.

As with most people here I have the difficulty with background noise such that I choose to avoid noisy pubs and restaurants. I’m relieved to learn that I’m not odd.

Nope, my hearing is otherwise fine, but I have this problem too – to the extent that I find it massively stressful and aggression-provoking.

(I have misophonia anyway, and it’s compounded when I’m overwhelmed by noise that I can’t parse properly).

I avoid such situations as if my life depends on it.

Interesting thread. I’ve had this problem for as long as I can remember – certainly back to my 20’s . I used to really struggle in nightclubs and would often ask people to repeat what they were saying. This would result in them shouting in my ear, which I still had trouble deciphering as it came across distorted. I’m sure I missed out on a few opportunities somewhere down the line.

In a quiet environment I can hear a sparrow fart and hear things my wife misses. I’m sure people think I’m being antisocial in busy environments but I just struggle to follow the conversation.