I have decent hearing, but when I'm in a noisy environment like a bar, I can hear but can't understand what other people are saying. It's why I don't like going to bars/pubs with live performances or ambient music.
People think I'm bored or brooding because I'm not talking to anyone, but I just can't understand anything anyone says, so I can't participate in a conversation.
Are you sure you have decent hearing? I thought I could hear what people were saying in noisy environments, but couldn't understand anything. This was one of the major symptoms for me before I was diagnosed with moderate/severe hearing loss. It's very isolating. No problems now with a decent set of hearing aids.
Have yourself tested! The quality of life improvement from a set of hearing aids is incredible!
edit: I was 31 when I was diagnosed, so don't think because you're young that you're immune. Generally hearing loss is very gradual so you don't really notice it. If you frequently have to ask people to repeat themselves though...
I have a similar problem in loud spaces. Given my activities (motorcycling, guitar playing, powertools, etc) I had assumed my hearing was bad, but when I went to an ENT/audiologist for unrelated things I had them give me a good test on a whim.
For me, the results were that I have hearing ability on-par with a ~5 year old, and they only see adults like me every 18 months or so. I've got a printoff of the chart around here somewhere, but it's well outside the normal, especially for my activities.
On the flipside, I'm very ADHD, which I think hurts my loud-space conversational abilities some. I always figure my ears are trying to listen to all of it at once.
(Most lightbulbs and televisions drive me up a wall, because I can hear them all the time)
I went to an audiologist a few years back because I could hear certain things that would drive me up the wall. I thought it might be tinnitus or something like that- I ride motorcycles, am on the water in boats, use power tools, etc. Turns out I have exceptional hearing as well, and much better high frequency responses than an average 30 year old. Certain cheap lights and power transformers can drive me absolutely freaking crazy.
I'm glad to know it is not just me! Our cheap HP printer makes the worst racket, when the house is quiet I can hear it in all the way in the kitchen from the other side of the house. Nobody else notices it, and I tried unplugging it once and it made an even worse noise (probably would fade as the capacitors discharge but when I was trying to sleep without a fan in another room I didn't care to wait).
As a kid I always used to take the batteries out of clocks when I would sleep at other peoples houses on a couch or something but since becoming an adult around 29 I gained a little more mental control so I can deal with that stuff a little better.
Yep, I have to be in a top-floor apartment with earplugs and double pane windows. I live near the mountains and it has done a lot for my quality of sleep and quality of life.
That is a good point, when I started sleeping with earplugs at my parents house where I don't have a fan or some noisemaker it made a huge difference to me. I found I would fall asleep much faster even when there was no actual obvious noises to keep me up. I've noticed when I'm falling asleep even minor noises can 'jolt' me (its the best description I can think of) and effectively reset my progress of falling asleep. Putting in earplugs can cut my time-to-sleep in half when I'm away from home.
i've noticed more and more cheap USB wall-wart chargers. I can hear them pulsing, it's sort of interesting, but super frustrating when trying to go to sleep (I end up just unplugging.. for which you can hear it scream as it drains)
I used to love the idea of a device without fans or spinning hard drive. But the last two "silent" tablets I've had randomly made very faint, but annoying, high pitch squeaking. Vibrating capacitors, I think. So ironically, I was better off with at least a low speed fan to provide white noise to cover up this faint electronic noise.
I so happy to know there are other people that experience this. When I try to explain to people that I can hear a CRT TV with with no sound/muted just because it's on they think I'm crazy.
I'm 33, I got a powerline plug that emits a high-pitched whine that drives me crazy. When I was in Tokyo, my friends and I would pass outside a shop at night that would have a supremely annoying whine that made me quickly walk away from it, but none of my friends could hear it.
I also frequently have to ask people to repeat themselves and can't hear what they're saying well in noisy environments. I think I have superhuman hearing loss.
When I was a kid, we had a monitor that whined when there wasn't any video going to it. My parents couldn't hear it, but I could hear it from across the house. I'd get up when my father went to bed to turn it off.
Closer to what I think you're describing: The TV didn't "whine" really (at least, I was never completely conscious of it), but I always knew when it was on.
My hearing isn't quite as good now, but there are still a few devices that I keep unplugged because they're loud and high-pitched.
With an app like Spectral Audio, you can actually prove this to them. Though informing them of their inferior hearing may not be beneficial to a friendship. Ymmv.
I find that hard to believe (that the whole world can't hear CRT screens) as the capacitor or whatever it was, winds up/down - it's pretty loud. I think it's the case that there are a lot of older people that can't hear that high pitched scream, and its only younger people who can hear in that high frequency.
"The operating frequency of an unloaded SMPS is sometimes in the audible human range, and may sound subjectively quite loud for people whose hearing is very sensitive to the relevant frequency range."
Even analog power supplies will generate a 50/60hz hum (depending on what the power-lines are providing)
The hum you hear is actually double the mains frequency (100/120 Hz) with emphasis on odd harmonics going up. Magnetostriction gives you two expansion/contraction events per wavelength, effectively doubling the frequency. (If everything is perfect, spherical cow in a vacuum, &c.)
Yes, the one that came with my Amazon Echo is the worst. I can hear it from 15 feet away. If I walk up to it and push on it it stops. I don't think pushing on it really makes the difference, I was guessing that it has to do with grounding it or something electrical changes when I touch it.
Hah. I discovered I could "hear electricity" when I was about 12 (and I still have a bit of it in my 40's), but luckily it was never particularly annoying (unless it was also quite loud).
Bonus: I leveraged it into the ability to emit (by sort-of-whistling with the tip of my tongue against my palate) sounds in the same frequency range (which has provided many hours of amusement over the years).
Oh, and this age-related degradation of hearing in the upper registers is also the basis of a few interesting things, like devices that discourage teens from loitering[1], and apps that allow teens to communicate under the noses of adults[2].
Same here. I have above average hearing (30 yo as well) and I hate so many high-pitched tones. But in a club or a bar I can barely understand anyone :(
This happens to me as well. I'll walk into a restaurant and there is a high pitched ringing coming from the HVAC on the ceiling, I ask anyone else if they hear it… no one does.
Probably not. There is a particular kind of hearing problem, where the brain doesn't process the frequency bins that sounds are broken down into very well. It impacts your ability to do source separation and tell the difference between different sources of sound. The symptom of this particular issue is that you can hear just fine when one person is talking, but have trouble in any environment where there are multiple sources of sound, so several people talking at once, background noise etc.
Because people have no problems in the classic quiet room, one person talking sound test environment, it tends to slip through the simple screening tests.
"Because people have no problems in the classic quiet room, one person talking sound test environment, it tends to slip through the simple screening tests."
This is exactly why every time I've had an Audiology test, I've never scored above "Average - Above Average", even though I can hear nearly every fluorescent light ballast, powered-on TV, etc. From my own personal tests that I've done with soundwave generators, I can hear up to about 20khz.
Printers, crt displays back when they were a thing, cheap chargers... even low-end LCD displays. All of them emit a high pitched frequency that can be maddening.
Interestingly it's pitched above the range of my tinnitus so I get to hear both most of the time :/
Summer here is my favorite time of year for that reason - the insect noise gets so loud at night, and falls right into the range of the tinnitus and e-noise such that it completely obscures them. It's almost like those sounds aren't there for a few months every year.
I've wondered if hearing loss can be induced purposely for specific ranges for cases like this. Maybe just loud sound of a given frequency would work since that would only resonate with and damage its associated hairs inside the ear.
This Reddit comment [1] suggests that people who work around CRTs a lot have a "notch" on their hearing tests at the CRT frequency of 15.734kHz. So yes it is possible.
On the other hand, you probably don't want the tinnitus that often comes with noise-induced hearing loss. Better to be able to turn off the noise (or wear earplugs) than to hear it all the time.
Naw. Just wear crappy earplugs (that is, that don't do a great job of silencing).
When I wear earplugs I can understand conversations better. Like many others in this thread, I have uncommonly good hearing but find it difficult to hear any conversation in a loud environment.
I need to get a hearing test, but I can often hear things that people around me can't (TVs, radios, bad speakers, etc). But put me in a noisy bar or restaurant and I'm at a loss. I figure it's my ADHD as well.
On a related note, this is why people talking during movies is so infuriating for me: while they're talking the movie is basically turned off for me.
Same for me and apparently many others in this post. Can hear fine with a single source of sound, little noises in distant rooms etc but put me in a noisy bar and I can't make out a thing.
That page seems pretty... unscientific. Sensitivity to coarse language, for example, is a social issue that has nothing to do with sensory sensitivity.
You might want to find an audiologist who knows how to diagnose/exclude Central Auditory Processing Disorder. It mimics some ADHD symptoms that aren't specifically hearing related, but also has as a hallmark not being able to separate foreground from background in noisy places and "hearing" people but not parsing the speech.
Some of the earliest work that Kahneman and Taversky (think behavioral economics or biases) stumbled upon that told them the brain was filtering/processing unconsciously and incorrectly was hearing focus. Different people would be able to recall strings of numbers played into each ear at varying levels of ability. The better you were at picking up more input streams, the better a bus driver, fighter pilot, or tank captain you would be.
Same-ish, I have perfect hearing and my eyesight is 20/15. I can barely hear people in bars or clubs. The best solution I've found so far are musicians ear plugs which attenuate most of the bass and highs in such environments. I've tried a few brands from Etymotic to Surefire to Alpine and I generally like the Alpine ones the most. Flare Audio also makes some, and I've looked at DUBS before as well. A few years ago, Etymotic was one of the only good products in this space, but there are a few now.
I'd definitely pony up for a pair from Bose. Their headphones don't impress me in the outright SQ department, but they have the best noise cancellation tech I've heard.
Yeah, that's the implication. Age-related hearing loss is called presbycusis; it's quite common. Some of it can be attributed to being exposed to loud noises throughout our lives.
Hard as it may be to believe, earbuds/earphones/in-ear headphones were not invented with the iPod, or even the MP3 player. ;-)
Today, many adults already have significant hearing loss from having regularly listened to loud music on portable players like the Walkman starting 30+ years ago. The first research on this seems to have been done in the mid-80's.
>"Hard as it may be to believe, earbuds/earphones/in-ear headphones were not invented with the iPod, or even the MP3 player"
Believe I am well aware of that time before ipod/iphone/streaming services etc :)
However back then there amount of time spent by people wearing earphone and headphones was much smaller comparison. Even with the existence of the Walkman it was not common to see people using them for instance in the office and at their desks for hours at a time during the work day.
People also didn't spend hours on the phone chatting socially with them either.
My comment was really more about non-congenital hearing issues being potentially common place in the future as a result of this change.
> Even with the existence of the Walkman it was not common to see people using them for instance in the office and at their desks for hours at a time during the work day.
You're only considering adults. Teens definitely did spend hours a day with earbuds in.
For me (ADD) it help a lot with a couple of simple music ear plugs. It might sound a bit weird, but the lower volume helps me pick out voices much easier. Also concerts started sounding like music instead of mostly ... noise.
Has been like this forever and have never had any (other) problems with my hearing.
Interesting! I can totally see having hyper sensitive hearing being very annoying too. From one rider to another, make sure you always wear hearing protection under your helmet :)
I wonder if that's the problem - hearing is too sensitive - I have mysophonia (level 6) and I'm more likely to hear a packet of sweets being opened than someone talking.
Bar type conversations usually have me decoding people's facial expressions and nodding or grimacing at the right times.
I became unable to understand conversations in noisy bars and restaurants. I had my hearing tested, and it was normal. I can hear one person talking quietly from across the house, but can't understand a person right next to me in a bar. It's very frustrating.
A while back I was treated with cisplatin as part of chemotherapy. One of the side effects is ototoxicity. I acquired tinnitus that ranges from unnoticeable to distracting but not severe (I've noticed that green tea is a very reliable trigger for the rest of the day). I self-tested my hearing after chemo and found that I'd lost 15KHz and higher. I knew about the side effects before starting treatment, so I'd already run the same test. Pre-treatment, I could easily hear up to 17.5KHz.
I've adjusted to the hearing changes for the most part, but the most insidious new problem is acute sensitivity to nearby conversations when I'm talking to someone else. The best way to describe it is that I've lost the dynamic range of amplitudes. Rather than being able to focus on one conversation and hear it as louder than the rest, I feel that all of them seem to be at the same volume. The worst is when I'm out walking with another person to have a conversation, and we come upon another walking/talking pair. I need to let the other people go ahead until they're out of earshot.
No complaints overall. I'd have died without the chemo, so it was a favorable trade.
Like the others who have replied here, I've found that I have the same issue. I started noticing at maybe around 35 (I'm 38 now), and I know it was something new, as I spend a lot of time in social settings.
I assumed I was losing my hearing, which would make sense as I was a DJ in my later teens and spent a lot of time with large speakers and no ear protection. I went to get tested this past summer and I passed - my hearing is basically "normal for my age". They didn't have much else to offer, unfortunately.
What I've noticed in loud settings, like bars or busy restaurants, is that I can hear the music and everyone's voice at once, but I can't seem to pick out the voices directly in front of me.
It can definitely be a bit embarrassing as I'm constantly asking people to repeat themselves if it's a serious conversation, and if it's not, I try for a while until I lose the thread and then zone out and ask my wife about it later.
Same for me. I have had my hearing tested several times and always had pretty good scores. But I still don't understand people in loud environments. It would be interesting to try a hearing aid.
I have the same problem and also was tested with "normal for age" hearing. But I know that most people can hear conversations in busy restaurants, loud cars, etc.
It can also be a neurological or psychological issue. I had my hearing tested after years of being totally unable to pick out voices in a noisy environment. Turns out my hearing is actually above average. My ENT suggested that I might just be "bad at hearing", in the same way that one might have poor memory, or have poor visual-spatial awareness. It's apparently a skill that can be trained.
I never thought of it that way but it makes sense. My hearing is fine and I can pick out quiet sounds, far away sounds, high-pitched sounds, etc... But I always have trouble turning the sounds that comes out of people's mouths into words especially if there's other noise. It's not a focus issue, either. I'm probably just bad at hearing speech in those situations for some reason.
I feel research in this area would be very relevant to foreign language learning. At some point you go from hearing gibberish to individual words, and then to being fast enough to assemble the words into meaning.
I have heard this[1] and my girlfriend (an amature musician) has worse hearing than me generally (subjectively based on quiet situations picking out very quiet sounds or high frequencies) but is way better than me in loud enviornments.
An audiologist once told me that hearing is sort of mechanical; does the vibration in the air stimulate the nerves that send a signal to the brain? Processing is where we make meaning of the signal. They are distinct functions.
I hear just fine (slightly above average 'signal' for my age), but in a noisy environment I struggle to focus on the voice of the person in front of me and exclude the 'noise'. That's processing.
There are different aspects - I have good hearing (measured by quiet tones in an audiogram test) but a worse masking threshold than other people (so sounds are swamped by other, typically lower frequency sounds) but you are unlikely to find an audiologist who will test you for this, and anyway there is not much you can do about it.
I have mild hearing loss, but I never realized how much I relied on lip-reading until I started hanging out with a friend who habitually put his hand in front of his mouth while talking. "Brian, you've pressed mute again".
I have similar issues and have "pretty good" hearing (been tested in the past 2 years)
My hearing is actually far better than it was when I was younger (32 now), I also had moderate/severe hearing loss from allergies (which I have mostly grown out of).
I always had a hard time understanding conversations, and thought it was my hearing but multiple audition tests confirmed that my hearing is just fine. I'm guessing it must be some mental inability to process words from the noise, since my hearing is fine. Hence, I don't think the OP necessarily has hearing problems.
I've had the same issue for a good chunk of my life. I have good hearing according to my standard and advanced 'musician' hearing tests (aside from tinnitus). But I have trouble focusing on a given conversation in a room full of noise. Places with flat walls reflecting sound make it especially difficult.
I have been tested in the past and I have very little hearing loss (other than some tinnitus), but I have trouble with the same things. If I'm in a bar or club if I'm not watching a person's lips I have trouble following the conversation.
In every physical where my hearing has been tested I've always gotten average results, but quite often if there is some noise in the room (like a dining hall or a bar) I have really hard time hearing what people are saying
Being able to pick out one voice in a cacophony is a learnable skill. If you don't have experience it's quite frustrating. I have decent hearing but I avoid these settings too. Talking in them is just too much effort.
No not a self test: you need to be tested by a professional. It's done in a sound proof booth using a standard set of tests, including mechanical things like measuring how well your eardrum responds to sound vibrations. I think I pay ~$75-$100CAD per checkup.
You usually don't need a referral as most hearing aid clinics will just let you call up and schedule an appointment. If you want to talk to an ENT specialist though, you'll probably have to go to your family doc first.
There's an iPhone app these days that will test your hearing called Mimi. Not sure how accurate it is. If you have symptoms you may want to confirm with a real doctor.
When I've described this problem to people in the past, I used my own term: "deconvolution issue". My mother and grandfather apparently have it too. Cool to see it's being researched.
I think of it more as a "demultiplexing" difficulty. I can hear the sound coming from their mouth, I just can't separate it from everything else and decode the language. I know that my hearing is good, even above average, and I don't suffer from tinnitus. I used to notice that I would have to ask people to repeat things a lot, and that other people didn't seem to have the same problem. I've found that watching the speaker's lips helps to some extent.
My own theory is that nobody can, in fact, hear everything that people say in such situations. But their mind does a great deal of work filling in the gaps. Our languages are surprisingly redundant, and quite often you can pick up everything you need to know from broken audio and other input like facial expressions and gesticulation. I think that my brain is worse at filling in the gaps.
You get no sympathy from people who can hear what's going on. They simply will not understand why you are so withdrawn.
Oddly enough, my wife has somewhat degraded hearing but she hears a lot better in noisy environments than I do. Must be like applying a filter to the noise, maybe she is losing the frequencies that cause confusion for me.
This will be an interesting product to try out - I hope there are more in the area of enhancing everyday interactions, rather than providing new distractions.
Enhanced vision is another area where I am hoping to see new products.
Try these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0044DEESS. I keep a pair in my pocket. They're shockingly good, and unless someone is looking closely for them they're not real noticeable.
They're also cheap enough that a lost pair is not catastrophic.
I was going to say the same thing. The general name for these is attenuating ear plugs. A lot of musicians, especially drummers, wear them on stage so they can hear their own instrument over everything else, at a sensible volume.
They vary primarily in their frequency response: some are flat and others are designed to cut specific frequencies more than others (e.g, for bass players vs guitar players).
I found out about them from a drummer who was wearing them in a nightclub after a gig. I initially thought he'd left them in by mistake, but he swore it made having conversations a lot easier. That, and he had no plans to go deaf from the loudness of the music (and you don't learn the drums if you dislike loud music).
I see a lot of live music. I am very lucky a doctor long ago told me I need to guard myself from hearing loss (he was treating me for an ear infection).
I always carry earplugs when I go to shows. Sometimes it's the nice plastic ones; sometimes I lose those and go back to the foam ones. Sometimes I forget and uses pieces of tissue (don't do that. When those pieces get stuck, it's slightly terrifying picking them out of your ear).
Last time I took one of those free hearing tests, I could still hear everything I should for my age range. I can still hear high pitch ringing (like from old CRT monitors), so I think my hearing is in decent shape for being in my 30s.
Hearing loss is a big problem in the US and it's spreading throughout the world. You don't want to be shelling out money of hearing aids later on in life (some are covered by medicare, but still) and once you start losing hearing .. you start to become isolated from people and friends. You will miss things and people won't bother repeating them or you'll just laugh and pretend you heard. It's isolating (according to a sign language instructor I had -- who wasn't deaf, but very impaired).
TL;DR Take care of your ears! Always have earplugs if you see live music a lot!
I don't go to concerts often but when I do, I tend to bring foam earplugs: partly to protect my hearing, partly because otherwise the music is usually subjectively painfully loud. Sometimes when I haven't brought them I make do with tissue.
Problem is, even without earplugs I always find it pretty hard to actually experience the music, comprehend the lyrics, etc. at concerts because it's so loud and distorted. Earplugs reduce the loudness (not as much as I'd like), but they also muffle high frequencies, making it even harder. I've sometimes resorted to the somewhat silly approach of having one ear plugged and one unplugged, alternating every few minutes, so I can hear the music better, while still somewhat reducing the volume accumulating over time. Probably not the best idea.
I haven't tried fancy musician's earplugs yet. I know they're supposed to provide a more even attenuation curve, but they also have less noise reduction overall, which isn't great. I suppose I should buy a pair and see what they feel like at a concert…
But do you have any advice? What's your impression of sound quality at concerts when you wear plugs?
With the sorts of metal and rock shows I go to, it seems like the 12-15db that flat response earplugs reduce isn't enough. My ears still ring with foams that do 33db, even with the highs being muddy. Are there any really expensive ones that have a flat response to at least the 20db level?
I also feel concerts can be painfully loud without earplugs (though I find foam reduces the volume too much, so either we have different preferences or you aren't getting a good seal with the foam).
I have the exact Etymotic attenuating earplugs mentioned a few levels up. They don't reduce the volume as much as foam, but they reduce it enough for me, and the sound balance is much better. I can understand lyrics better with those earplugs than any other configuration I've tried, including no earplugs at all.
They aren't magic and they won't get the volume/balance perfect for you, but for $13 they are pretty great.
The triple-flanged hearos are all you need[1]. I played drums in a few bands and always used these when practicing and playing live. Nowadays I take em to concerts as well. They sound great.
I regularly go to concerts as part of the audience, and also as part of a band.
Getting ear-molded linear -15dB protections has been my best decision ever since I enjoy and practice music. I definitely recommend you give some a try.
Those are the ones I have - they make loud concerts much more enjoyable actually, since sometimes the volume seems to be adjusted for people who are already half deaf, as a result of going to loud concerts... it's a vicious cycle.
To be honest, I'd rather go to a loud show with earplugs than a quiet show without. Half the fun of a live show is the visceral punch of the literal sound waves.
Your ears compress sound to a degree when it gets loud, I wonder whether there might be a difference in that capacity.
I also can't hear a word in a noisy environment, I'm relatively sure my hearing is "fine"
Question: When you wear these, do you get the same sensation you get when you put your fingers/expanding foam earplugs in your ears? It is hard to describe but almost like a humming/pressure sound? Depending on how I put them in I can get that sound or not. When I don't get it, I'm not sure if they are working. When I do, the quality of the audio suffers.
I've been using these [0] for years at the initial recommendation of a colleague who goes shooting frequently. They've been great for travel on airlines, and for nights out at loud(er) events.
I have the opposite problem. I can understand people fine in noisy environments, but I can't speak loudly enough for other people to understand me. The end result is pretty much the same, though. I end up not really talking to people much in super noisy environments because it's too much of a struggle for me to try to talk loudly enough.
It's very interesting and a little scary that you mention that because, while I don't have any of the other warning signs, my grandfather recently passed away just short of the age of 80 from complications due to Parkinson's. For my own sanity I don't want to jump to any conclusions but I'll look into it, and I thank you for the suggestion. For what it's worth my voice has been relatively low and soft my whole life, so it's not a recent change or development. (I'm currently 27.)
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There is a lot more to hearing than just your ear. Signals have to be processed by the brain and that's often where the problem is. A good example are children with sensory integration problems: a child will often go through phases when it will have trouble "hearing", but the actual problem will be with processing. You then have to repeat things several times so that the child "hears" you, but at the same time the child will have no problem with hearing quiet sounds. Kids are especially interesting because as they grow (and with therapy) you can observe as these things change over time.
Granted it doesn't stop me from being outgoing, but people having to almost shout or otherwise talk directly into my ear gets old after a while. I suspect it's not an issue with hearing itself so much as the brain processing the information.
In quiet conditions I can usually hear whispered conversations a good distance away.
I suspect my experiences bartending lead me to having the problem GP describes. Too much noise over and over... (although the summer jobs working with machinery and not enough ear protection and all the concerts probably contribute too).
But during bartending a few things are true:
* it's not too loud when you have time for a conversation.
* if it is too loud to converse, you're probably busy enough that interaction very simplified to a small subset of language - so lip reading becomes a big contributor to understanding. (e.g. basic greeting scripts, "can i get a..." and so on)
* when it's loud, it's pretty socially acceptable for the bartender to lean in to the conversation to hear - the "personal space bubble" of the speaker tends to shrink in that instance. Similarly a bartender asking you to repeat that a bit louder isn't considered rude.
edit: I wish I was clever enough to say this in as few words as BurningFrog did :)
This. As a severely hearing-impaired individual, context is EVERYTHING in a conversation. Or, like, 95%. In all but the best environments, I'm not actually hearing what you're saying, I'm pattern matching your garbled sounds to the closet logical words my brain can think of. The narrower the context, the better and faster I can do this.
This is why, for example, I don't answer unexpected phone calls. If I don't know the initial context of the call, the first minute is going to be very confusing for both parties.
The human brain is remarkably good at filling in the blanks.
I rely on context, plus lip-reading, plus the sounds I do hear to figure out the rest.
For context - I'm not severely hearing impaired - I only have a mild-to-moderate loss in both ears, but it's enough to hamper me in normal conversations, particularly in group settings or noisy environments. I use Siemens hearing aids at work, at church etc. - basically, anything that's not 1:1, or where I can't easily ask them to repeat things constantly.
I really really am bad at hearing anything in a noisy environment yet I was a bartender for 3 years and never had a problem getting someone's order. You get used to reading people's lips given that there is only a limited amount of things they could be ordering.
Very often I didn't understand what the clients were talking to me about but then I'd hear keywords like "beer" or "tequila" and the quantity they want is very often requested using hand gestures (finger count).
Even then, the usual conversation between a bartender and the client is very short. To the contrary, when getting together with a bunch of friends you have to listen to entire stories which is way harder.
I've been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder somewhat recently. Before the diagnosis, I had my hearing tested a couple of times over the course of my adult life but nothing was found. It was during my ASD diagnosis that I've learned that people on the spectrum may sometimes have sensory issues, and sometimes hearing is affected. It explained why I can't understand what people were saying in noisy environments where everyone else seemed to carry out conversations normally.
I often have difficulty parsing speech in noisy bar/club environs. This has always made me into a bit of a wallflower. Then I started dating a woman who was also very wallflowery, but mostly because it was a lot of effort for her to talk loudly.
We ended up having a lot of arguments, because she'd say things to me, I'd tell her I couldn't understand what she was saying, then she'd refuse to talk louder but still hold me accountable for remembering what she said.
Oh how I know that feeling. The absolute biggest benefit of getting hearing aids was that my relationship with my wife improve immensely. Not joking at all, it was a constant source of friction between us even though logically we both knew neither one of us was really to blame.
Same issue, although exacerbated by a misspent youth near noise sources like teletypes and machine rooms. Certain high frequencies in my hearing spectrum were damaged which, as an audiologist demonstrated for me once, means I can't hear some allophones, especially from people with high voices (children, women). When its nominally quiet, my brain can fill in what those allophones would have been and I "hear" them normally, but when there is wide frequency noise in that spectrum the missing allophones cause the phonemes to become impossible to decipher. She had this tool that would play back words and could remove frequencies with a notch filter and replace the missing sound with either silence (still understandable) or noise (not understandable). Tuning a hearing aid to boost those weak areas works well for me with the exception that hearing aids don't benefit from the brains ability to focus on sounds in particular directions so they enhance the spectrum areas from all around rather than just where I'm looking.
There's a little bit of a life-hack for this (assuming your hearing really is okay) in loud environments... Push the little flap of the recipient's ear (the flap is called the 'tragus') over their ear canal to seal it off. Then you can lean in and speak loudly enough to overcome the ambient noise without hurting them.
The Army Rangers have headphones that cancel gunfire and explosions and enhance voices, they say they can have a normal conversation in the middle of a battle. Very clever!
Maybe this is another reason people think I'm brooding. I can only hear the people directly next to me in a noisy environment; not the people on the other end of a table for example. I typically assumed they couldn't hear me either, but now I'm wondering.
I work in a noisy (slot tech in a casino) and I was able to adapt to it to be able to hear people distinctly in a very noisy environment it's called the cocktail party effect.
Through a crowd of people and and multiple noisy machines I could hear someone ask me "Where is the bathroom" or "How do I..." I guess it's a learned skill.
Up to a limit I mean it's not a superhuman skill just existing in certain circumstances and in my regular environment. I'm sure I'd be terrible in a noisy environment I'm not used to.
Your description marks you as about average. What GP is describing is not being able to hear/understand people that are right next to them in a noisy environment, unless someone is literally talking directly into their ear.
That said, yes, it is entirely possible that someone at the other end of the table could hear and understand you.
My mother has this issue (and so do I). Her doctor told her that the problem was a cognitive issue. Apparently some brains have a hard time filtering all of the noise into something we can understand. Have no idea if it's true but seems plausible.
Yes, a psychiatrist evaluated me prescribed Ritalin.
I had a nice improvement in concentration and attention to what I'm doing at work, but I haven't gone out to a bar or concert since, to try talking in a noisy environment.
I have the exact same problem. This could really be a life changer for me. Only recently I was at a reception at work after one of our town hall style meetings and in the large room with many people talking, I could barely hold a conversation. It literally took all my mental effort just to hear what the person if front of me was saying. I left shortly after because I couldn't talk to anyone.
Actually just getting some earplugs helps this. Will filter your noise and make it really easy to have a conversation at normal level with someone near you. Use this myself for sports events, sometimes lounges, and of course flights. They cost way less than these headphones and work just as well to quell the problem you have.
Or if you don't want to use earplugs, just plug your ears when someone is talking to you. Same effect really.
I've recently started carrying earplugs on my keychain for basically this reason, everything just sounds much better. The only tricky thing is remembering to speak loudly enough so that everyone else can hear me.
I suffer a bit from tinnitus and as a result have taken to carrying earplugs for noisy environments. I find in addition to protecting my ears I can hear conversation better. I think basically the ears work better in the normal db range and don't function so well if overloaded. My kit, approximately:
Wax is quite good because you can adjust the effect - put in loosely they don't block much, squish them down and they do. I also chop them down to fit which the packet advises against. I recommend for tinnitus avoidance if nothing else.
I'm the same and it drives me (and my wife if Im honest) crazy. For whatever reason I pick up background noise with much more intensity than most people. Surround sound is useless to me, I'll hear cricket chirps and background music over the dialog.
I can more of less push through it at a pub and in other social situations but its extremely draining.
You have described my problem exactly. It's impossible to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. I've been tested and other than tinnitus, I'm told my hearing is normal. This could be awesome.
Had that my whole life. I was diagnosed with "Hyper-Hearing" were normal people have a frequency bumps and dips in their hearing my was a straight line all at the top.
Now that I am lower I have ringing ears and lost the high frequency range of sound to a "slightly bellow level" and will probably never have to have hearing aids. My brain just couldn't figure out how to filter out all that noise.
Get medical help to test yourself. This is not to scare you but there are large number of sometime even trivial health issues that might cause this. It will hurt your social professional life.
I use to avoid drive-through, phone conversations etc. because there was always a 10% chance that everything I heard seemed like other person mumbling something. Medical help helped me correct the problem.
You may have auditory loss that affects only certain frequencies.
The problem is easily masked in a quiet environment, since your brain has more aural information to put the words together, but in a noisy environment, where many of the speech frequencies are cancelled by ambient sounds, you don't receive enough aural information.
Woah, so many people "suffer" from the same thing!
edit. As for these hearphones, would be interesting to test them, but dont think I've used them. Never seen the problem as a big thing. More like annoyance perhaps. And yes, I am cheap.
Too many 80s rock concerts mean there's a giant downward notch in the center of my hearing range. I gave up on socializing in loud environments long ago because people speaking is what I hear the least. I will definitely give these a try!
Happy to see (with your comment and subs) that I am not alone. For my case, it is explained by the fact my right ear is deaf (I was born like that). The left one has perfect hearing, but I guess missing stereoscopic sound totally changes the game.
I have great hearing and totally agree. I am always annoyed being out with a bunch of friends around a restaurant table and no one can hear further than about 2 people away from them. This seems kind of neat!
Not to piggy back off randlet, but I would venture to say that most people would consider being unable to hear conversation when there is background noise the opposite of "decent hearing."
I think (or rather I hope) that it's the price tag and ease of acquiring them that makes this special.
I have wished to friends and to a couple people like me for a hearing aid for hyper-vigilant people. Something that turned down the entire world, except for human speech, by 10-20 dB. I have my fingers crossed that these Bose devices can be re-purposed for this, just by turning down the gain to near ambient, so I can finally have some fucking peace and quiet.
Then maybe I won't think these open seating environments are the worst development in software for the last twenty years...
My dad has tinnitus and pretty bad hearing (was a rock drummer in the 70's) but he found the hearing aids he got (they were at least a few thousand $ or more) made everything sound very digital/tinny and it was unnatural enough that he stopped wearing them. I wonder if these will sound any more or less natural than a nice set of hearing aids.
The older you get, probably the tougher it is to adapt too. Wearing hearing aids is very strange for the first little while since you're hearing all kinds of strange things again. For me everything seemed sharper/harsher initially but that's just because it all had been so muted for so long! It took me months of continuous wearing to get used to the sound so that it now sounds unatural to not be wearing them. He really needs to put them in when he wakes up and take them out for the shower/going to bed and thats it. If he only wears them occassionally, he'll probably never get used to them (my dad/grandpa had the same problem).
His audiologist can also set him up with a "training" program in his hearing aids that softens the amplification while he's getting used to them and after a few months go back to a more normal program. If he's not happy, have him talk to his audiologist...high end devices are highly tunable!
Thanks a lot for the info/advice. I will definitely share. He was wondering if a small directional speaker attached to some part of the ear that allowed the natural sound to just be augmented by an amplified speaker would be better than blocking the whole ear from natural sound and replacing with digital. I wonder what the "digital" effect of these Bose headphones will be. I would expect that they are inferior to hearing aids that have been under development for eons but maybe it will be a different approach that addresses different problems.
I had basically the same problem, but was unable to adapt. I got my hearing aid when I was 17 or 18. Everything sounded tinny and harsh, and my hearing in my left ear is more or less normal.
I guess the bigger problem was that putting it in my ear made me very dizzy, but I'd have tried to deal with that if the sound weren't so bad.
Yes, they're expensive. I think I payed $6000 total for 2 hearing aids with a 3 year service contract and expect them to last 5-6 years (possibly longer). You can certainly get cheaper ones though without all the bells and whistles. You're right though, Bose is going to have to come in way below that price ;)
I've been amazed for a long time at the cost of hearing aids. Surely the tech is not that costly nor that specialised? How much do those $6k devices cost to make, I can't imagine it's even a 10th of the sale price?
I mentioned it in another post, but my guess is that it's due to insurance companies footing the bill (and government subsidies in Canada) so they can get away with charging more.
I have a degenerative hearing disease called otosclerosis so my hearing changes pretty frequently. My contract includes yearly adjustments to change the amplification vs frequency curve of the aids to compensate for my personal hearing loss profile, and free batteries for 3 years (zinc-air batteries that last ~5 days).
I'll second the pricing - you can figure around $3,000 per ear, plus another $500-$1,000 for the premium accessories. Price varies of model and included services, but that's the ballpark, as is the 5-6 year lifespan if well cared for (I had older analog aids that could last 10+ years and even survived submersion in water. Digital, not so much).
I'm not sure if it's actually fractal like in nature (hence the quotes around fractal); it's just somewhat random tones that help distract your brain from the tinnitus sound. I like it, but in situations where my tinnitus is bad (quiet rooms) I usually opt to have music on instead.
Are those hearing aids linked together like the hearphones are? It seems to me that a large part of being able to cut down on ambient noise and boost local conversation is because local conversation is more directional than ambient noise.
Do you think they'd be worth getting just for the ambient noise cutting abilities alone? My daughter has complete hearing loss in one ear and normal functionality in the other. Normally she's fine, but in a crowd she's completely lost.
Mine are not linked and don't have real direction control but you can definitely get aids with that capability. It's certainly worth a shot. I'm not sure if she's wearing ha's yet, but many places will let you try a pair for 30 or 60 days to see if she likes them.
I would probably find it annoying to swap out my ha's for the hearphones regularly, but might be worth the annoyance if it allows here to converse more normally!
2016 MBP per ear!!! I'm not sure why the price is so high but I suspect it has to do with insurance companies footing the bill a lot of the time. I know Costco now offers hearing aids at cheaper prices but I don't have experience buying from them.
I really wish someone was working to solve the problem of tinnitus. Would it be possible to generate anti phase wave out of these things to cancel out tinnitus? I would pay anything and/or wear any goofy device in my ears to live life tinnitus free.
A project I worked on suggests vibrating the bone just under the earlobe at around 50kHz with a piezoelectric stack might help. 8 years or so ago I helped make a pocket sized and rechargeable medical device that operates on this principle. Last I checked it was still in FDA hell but helping the majority of sufferers in the trials. The theory of operation is that is breaks up tiny air bubbles stuck to the hairs in the inner ear.
An interesting side note is that you could 'hear' a very high pitched sound when using the device even though 50kHz is far outside the standard human hearing range. We still are not sure but think we were hearing a lower harmonic of the tone bouncing around the skull.
I wonder if you are hearing a "beat" tone (a third tone which is heard when two tones of different frequency are played. Playing tones at 500 and 600 Hz will also cause a tone at 100 Hz to be heard). This is how 3D positional audio systems work -- they beam two ultrasonic tones, and the difference tone appears to emanate from where the ultrasonic beams intersect.
Sending 50kHz vibrations into the earn should interact with a 49kHz tone to cause the listener to hear a 1kHz tone.
(This is all from an acoustics course I took over a decade ago, so take it with a grain of salt!)
I suddenly lost the hearing on one ear and it got replaced by a strong and permanent tinnitus. I quantify it as strong based on my talks with others with tinnitus.
What worked for me was stop fighting and start loving it. Now it's a perma mantra. Some somatic malfunction that enables me to ear the hum inside of me or whatever poetry works for you. Try it maybe.
> What worked for me was stop fighting and start loving it. Now it's a perma mantra. Some somatic malfunction that enables me to ear the hum inside of me or whatever poetry works for you. Try it maybe.
Whoa, what an interesting strategy. Here's a question for you: is your tinnitus a constant predictable pitch? If so, you could probably train a strong relative pitch skill enough to be able to spoof perfect pitch! That's pretty cool.
Been an amateur musician I did try that, but sadly what I hear has a big range of frequencies and it also changes. Curiously its pitch fluctuates when I move my head or eyeballs.
I think there already is a kind of therapy. I read that they basically determine the exact frequency of your tinnitus. Then you give them music you like and they filter the frequency out. By listening to the altered music, the tinnitus is reduced. It seemed to work quiet well, but I forgot what the procedure is called.
I'm hearing a tinnitus for over 10 years now, so I know what it's like. :)
As long as you have decent pitch, it shouldn't be too hard. Just listen to square waves at various frequencies until you narrow in on the frequency of your tinnitus.
When you play two square waves that are slightly off, you also hear a really obvious pulse that corresponds to how off they are (1 pulse per second means they're off by exactly 1 hz, and so on.) I don't know what the experience of tinnitus would be, but assuming you can hear the tinnitus and a square wave at a close pitch, it should be fairly easy to isolate the exact frequency with a binary search.
I tried with the tone generator linked elsewhere in the thread. One, there's no pulse, which isn't surprising because tinnitus is all in my head. Two, at least for me, tinnitus is not a single well-defined pitch. It fluctuates. Sometimes just by concentrating on it I can move the frequency up and down.
I found a frequency that was pretty close to what I hear (it's convenient that my left ear is mostly normal), and cranked it in my right ear. I now hear something like a distant swarm of bees, or a server room full of very loud fans.
> Would it be possible to generate anti phase wave out of these things to cancel out tinnitus?
No. Tinnitus is not caused by a real sound. It occurs somewhere after the phase-erasing Fourier transform performed by the physical structure of the ear. If it were caused by a real sound, or the brain added sounds in the time space (rather than the frequency space), it would work. But neurons are not fast enough to handle time-domain sound processing, so they offload Fourier transformation to the ear and then work with the (presumably phaseless) frequency-domain representation.
But neurons are not fast enough to handle time-domain sound processing, so they offload Fourier transformation to the ear and then work with the (presumably phaseless) frequency-domain representation.
Then how is it that you can play one frequency into one ear and a slightly different frequency in the other ear, and the brain will register the beat frequency?
Keep in mind that the binaural beats community spouts a lot of BS.
Only for the lowest frequencies (say, under 100 Hz) are there reliable traveling waves to even measure in the brain. Due to the firing refactory period where a neuron resets its membrane potential, most neurons have a max firing rate in the range of 250-300 Hz, so it's not possible for difference tones to explain any binaural beats above those frequencies.
Even for lower frequencies in the range of delta-gamma waves, it seems deeply unlikely that difference tones are the explanation, because the neurons encoding for frequency are separated spatially, so it's not as if two traveling waves reach the same neuron, subtract out, and result in the difference frequency.
However the brain produces the beat frequency, it's nothing like the way signals subtract in other media.
Keep in mind that the binaural beats community spouts a lot of BS.
That's not where this is coming from. If, as you say, the brain is processing information in the frequency domain, then how would beat frequencies arise? I'm not debunking what you are claiming. That fits what I know about hearing. I'm genuinely curious as to how!
Ah, my apologies. We used to have an RA in my old lab who was a little too obsessed with binaural beats. He claimed he could use mp3's like drugs...
My primary area of study was perceptual consciousness in the visual domain, so I had to look a little more in-depth into binaural beats to answer your question. So, it appears that frequency coding is the norm for higher frequencies, but not for lower frequencies, which are the only ones we can hear binaural beats from. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find much relevant neuroimaging literature, so I don't really know.
Binaural beats are an auditory illusion, but I'm not sure of what process. The lower frequencies do record phase information, and use that for localization information (comparing phase differences at each ear for a frequency tell you the angle it came in from), so It could be related. Sorry again!
Any nonlinearities in the Fourier transform process (of which there are presumably many) will manifest as harmonics of the beat frequency. I'm on my phone right now, but if you take two simple-ratio tones, add them, apply a nonlinearity (like exponentiation to a non-1 power), and then Fourier transform, you will see the beat frequency and its effects. I imagine (but do not know) that this is the physiological mechanism for high-frequency beat frequencies.
For binaural beats with low-frequency tones, I can only guess, but you can actually reconstruct phase information from the frequency domain signal depending on your sampling period. As a trivial example, imagine f << 1/T; now you can treat the DC component of the Fourier transform as a time-domain signal that contains f. I imagine that's how binaural beats work, as they occur at sufficiently low frequencies for this to happen. It could also be that the ear transmits low-frequency time domain information as well as frequency-domain information.
see my other comment. I wish they didn't start by forcing you to have tinnitus to begin with. I'd use foam inserts if they were given out at concerts and clubs etc - but not if I'm the only one bringing them with me, that's ridiculous.
tinnitus is caused by people listening to music that is too loud. Music is too loud at most venues, if you are standing where you are meant to.
EDIT:
people don't like this comment, and point out that in many places inserts are available. All the same, the general clubs that I go to where I live, don't have them, and, more to the point, nobody else wears them. it's a social problem and perhaps a marketing problem. many bars / clubs are too loud and I as a consumer haven't been solicited to pay for a solution on-site. (even if this exists.) others I'm with don't wear anything either.
The responses here have convinced me that I likely should invest in some and bring them with me - but I don't like that I'm the only one doing so, and it seems kind of anal. i'm just being honest about how I feel. it would be easier if they were more readily available / being sold, and if everyone were using them.
I like to be cool and do the same thing everyone else does. just being honest.
I've learned that it is just necessary to bring foam earplugs to a lot of events. (even movie theaters now).
In general, if the performers are wearing them, you probably should be, too. Your health is not a good place to think about being worried about what other people aren't doing to protect theirs.
I got a pair for EDC after realizing the foam earplugs were ruining the music. These reduce the volume with minimal muffling. Also pretty cheap considering they'll last a long time.
I picked them up at guitar center - they can help you get the right ones.
For those that use earphones a lot at work or on public transit or whatever, I also highly recommend Etymotic's in-ear isolating earphones. They are basically those musician's earplugs with a small driver in the tip. They reduce external noise on-par with foam plugs, so I can listen to my music at much lower volumes rather than cranking the volume of the music to drown out my surroundings. The sound quality is quite good as well. I have the hf3 model and they are by far better than any other earphones I've used that are sub $200.
Their headphones are great in terms of the quality of sound they produce, but their durability leaves a lot to be desired. I've used both the MC5's and HF5's and both ended up with shorting out on one side (HF5) or falling apart (MC5) on me within just a few months.
Interesting, mine have held up pretty well. My hf3s are going on four years old. I've used them on a near daily basis at work and fairly frequently under a motorcycle helmet. The exterior sleeve of the cords is starting to fray at the attachment points to the actual earphones, but they still work just fine. I expect I'll have to finally replace them within the next year or so, but I'll do it happily because they've outlived everything else I can remember in my daily rotation including two phones, a laptop, a wallet, and a backpack.
>The exterior sleeve of the cords is starting to fray at the attachment points to the actual earphones, but they still work just fine.
That's how it started with my MC5's. I put a piece of heat shrink tubing over the fray in order to postpone their demise but ultimately the plastic housing of the driver itself broke. The HF5's one day just stopped working out of one ear. I was never particularly rough with them or anything and only really used them at the office, but that was it for me.
I since moved on to a pair of Sennheiser MM 550-Xs but stopped using them because there was Bluetooth interference in my office (every one of about 70 desks in an open plan has a Bluetooth phone headset). Plus, the band messed with my hair and scalp.
Now I'm on a pair of Sennheiser CX 686G SPORTS that I originally bought for running but now use at the office. Sound's good enough and the build quality is superb since it was designed to be tossed about while doing active stuff.
I would gladly go back to Etymotic if they came out with something new in the $100ish price range, but for now I'll stick with Sennheiser. I've bought probably 6 different pairs of headphones from Sennheiser of varying styles in the past decade or so, and they all still work (with varying degrees of wear and tear). The only time a pair has broken on me was because I stupidly tried putting them on after they spent a night in a below-freezing car and didn't give them time to warm up, snapping the plastic headband, and their warranty service still replaced them with no questions asked.
I'll corroborate. I'm a musician, and I can play music wearing Ety-Plugs! (I used to buy the ER-20 "baby blues" but the same object is now called "Ety-Plug.") They are far from perfect, but for the money, they're pretty darn good. (Freq response is not flat. However, it's way flatter than the foam plugs.)
Another vote for Eytmotic's earplugs from me. I like going to metal concerts but hate how loud they crank the volume since it muddles the sound. With these earplugs you can actual pick out individual instruments during the performance, plus the added benefit of not destroying your hearing.
I second this. I've mostly used datacenter earplugs over the years, which really mangle music. These earplugs are sold to musicians and are really great for music.
Absolutely. I have a pair of these and they go everywhere with me. Movies, concerts, sports events--anything with loud sound--these are perfect. They're small enough to tuck away in my purse so I never forget them.
It's insane how loud some movie theaters are nowadays. My first experience with this was three years ago in Hong Kong, watching "Pacific Rim". At first I thought it was a technical problem and looked around me to see how other guests react, but nobody seemed to mind, apart from our small group of Europeans. I seriously contemplated leaving because it was almost unbearably loud and I was worried about my hearing.
Lately I've had similar experiences here in Austria, so it seems the trend is moving towards louder movies in cinemas, though I really hope they at least make an exception for children's movies, since it would be a shame to submit them to such a loud environment for hours at a time. (not that it isn't bad for grown-ups too, it's just especially worrying with children)
What gets me is how arbitrary sound levels seem. I'd expect sampling in the theatre to set the volume level to avoid hearing damage and make the levels comfortable but what appears, to me, to happen is the projectionist sets the sound level - so if you get a projectionist that is [seemingly] practically deaf then the volume level is far too high.
Went to a kids show, some disney tripe or other, volume was painful for me and made my youngest at the time cry ... movie theatres clearly have a thing about being loud but surely that doesn't help to make them a place anyone wants to be. Yes, I went out and spoke to someone and had the sound level lowered, it was still loud; I'm sure it was beyond the safe working volume set by Health & Safety Executive [UK] though. Amazed that it's not monitored and set automatically.
I always have these available around my house... I used to carry them with me everywhere.
I started using them in the 90s rave scene in SF. I would go to a party and would always bring earplugs with me, extra ones and hand them out. Especially to people who appeared to have had... a little too much. Sometimes handing a plastic bag of earplugs to someone who has had too much is a great thing from them as it helps them center a bit more.
I personally think that all concert ticket windows should hand these out with each ticket purchase/pickup.
I used to do this at Ska concerts in NY. I am a woodworker and always have a gigantic box of them at home, so it was easy to fill a ziplock.
One time I got grabbed by a bunch of bouncers and forcibly expelled from the venue - they thought the purple earplugs were drugs. Once they realized they were super apologetic and we had a good laugh about it.
>I wish they didn't start by forcing you to have tinnitus to begin with. I'd use foam inserts if they were given out at concerts and clubs etc - but not if I'm the only one bringing them with me, that's ridiculous.
No one is "forcing you" to have tinnitus. And what's so "ridiculous" about protecting your own hearing?
We are responsible for our own self-destructive behavior, like going to concerts without ear protection. Almost everyone's done it, but let's not blame other people for our own recklessness.
Just bring them with you. Better yet, invest in a pair of better earplugs[1] - they have a flatter frequency response, so the music sounds way better than it does with the foamies.
Most venues will also either give you or sell you (for $1) a pair of foam earplugs at the bar. Do it.
tinnitus can be caused for other reasons than loud music, some that are not that well understood. Any sensorineural hearing loss can be accompanied by tinnitus. Autoimmune inner disease (AIED) and meniere's disease can bring about tinnitus. Tinnitus sucks. I think the best guess is nerve cells in the inner ear firing improperly and generating a random noisy signal that gets interpreted wrong by the brain.
I've got otosclerosis which causes tinnitus too. It sucks, but thankfully you get used to it somewhat and listening to background music brings me a lot of relief.
all right - sounds like you know a lot about it. Is it fair to say most tinnitus in the world is preventable, and most (as a percentage of people suffering from tinnitus) have had as a direct cause loud noise? (So that if they had had earing protection, they would not have tinnitus.)
I keep a pair of high-quality earplugs[0] on my keychain. They're completely invisible and always there when I need them. I find myself using them about once a week.
I love earasers. Best I've used so far. Super comfortable, tiny, and discreet. No one even knows you're wearing them, and they work so well for concerts, without making everything muffled. I use them for everything with noise at this point,mowing the lawn, snowblowing, etc.
My tinnitus is hereditary, from my father's side. I have a constant ringing that my mind usually filters out unless I think about it, but some nights it can be pretty "loud".
I quote the word because I can hear even the slightest sounds like the ticking of a watch in another room in complete silence, while at the same time being overwhelmed by the ringing. I had a hearing test done a couple years ago at a neurological institute to try to diagnose other issues (migraine-related), and my hearing was higher than they could measure. So it's not damage. It's quite fascinating.
I've gone to only one concert in my lifetime, and I don't listen to loud music. I haven't been around loud equipment for any length of time.
Does it get louder when you clench your jaw? Sometimes tinnitus is due to teeth/jaw issues. Sometimes people report tinnitus getting worse or better after getting teeth removed or jaw work done. For a variety of reasons, I'm starting to think my ringing is at least partially due to pressure on my teeth and jaw. Now I need to find a TMJ specialist who will be willing to try to figure out what might help.
That's an interesting observation! Yes, it does, and it's a higher pitch.
That might be something to explore; thank you for that. I also grind my teeth aggressively at night (which I wasn't aware of until ~1y ago when my wife told me).
I've stuffed paper towels in my ears in spinning or zumba classes. The loudspeakers are in front of the students blasting right at us. The teachers are behind them and generally younger.
The foam earplugs are pretty cheap in bulk. I've brought bags with me to concerts and given them out. (I want to help make the world safe for acoustic music.)
My tinnitus was caused by a movie theater. It was the first showing in an imax theater and I was seated in the top row (probably directly under a kicker).
Don't know if it's mandatory, but I think every concert I've been to in Switzerland has had free earplugs (foam and sometimes better ones). They also often have tinnitus prevention posters shown. In practice many people use them (and a bunch of people bring their own better earplugs).
I find that really nice (and wish more countries would do the same).
Longtime sufferer of tinnitus. This has been my understanding as well. From what I understand, once the hair dies, the brain seems to compensate by filling it with eternal noise. If there is a cure (my hopes are low), my guess is that we need to have a better understanding of the brain.
A random idea: that mechanism reminds me of phantom limb pain. I wonder if there could be a treatment analogous to mirror therapy, at least for monaural tinnitus.
An ex-coworker founded http://www.neuromoddevices.com/technology. It's still in the clinical research stage, but it's a cool device that utilise bi-modal neuromodulation and aim to promote positive therapeutic change within the human nervous system.
I have read that NMDA agonists (DXM, Ketamine, PCP, other arylcyclohexamines) work pretty well for this. Anecdotally, their withdrawal symptoms include tinnitus so I'm not surprised the inverse could be true.
I found blocking loud noise with earplugs allowed my ears to recover naturally over time to a fair extent. It may not work for everyone but it's easy and cheap to try.
comfy, snug and 32db (depending on version) of attenuation. That means that you can go to a loud gigs (95db) without the risk of tinitus.
same goes for bars. Loud noises are draining, have your hearing shattered by someone shouting in your ears is a pain.
Yes, if you choose the colourful ones its obvious. there are natural colours.
Bose makes a lot of song and dance about how you can adjust for noise, your ears do that already. The advantage of normal ear plugs is that you still retain some of the dimensionality that earphones loose.
Sadly I've had a child, and all that shrill screaming has basically killed off 10db of sensitivity of my hearing. but I'm 10db up form most of my musician friends
This is great. My wife has meniere's disease, so we need to protect her hearing in all moderately loud situations, (bars, music venues, movies). In advance of SXSW one year, I bought her a pair of these: http://amzn.to/2gK8qZv
"Musician's earplugs", so-to-speak, they attenuate all frequencies more evenly than standard foam plugs would. In effect just turning down the volume of the world a bit, not muffling it.
I don't have meniere's, but do get drained by bars and loud music. I hate to seem lame by wanting to leave a party/bar early, so I bought a pair for myself recently. They're just fantastic. Highly recommend.
Don't get me wrong, for those of us who have to use hearing aids this is a godsend, it allows directionality that previously was impossible.
However, for people with "normal" hearing, this will be a step down in usability.
The earlobe is shaped like they are to allow your brain to pickout and isolate sound in three dimensions+. Firstly this is automatic, you've been doing it since before you were born.
Secondly, the design of the era plugs completely remove the "shaping" sound of the earlobe (for want of a better term. This is why stereo records still sound flat, they don't have the extra metadata the deformities of the earlobe provide. hence binaural recordings.)
Yes that means you can remove the background noise completely, and replace it with the "what's in front of you" but that is a 2d (if you're lucky) image, so good luck differentiating between two people close together. Ear plugs _shouldnt_ mess with the "metadata" because they should be in the earcanal. All they are doing is attenuating the signal, not re-writing it.
However I can't state enough how much this is going to improve people who are dependant in earphone's lives. For the rest of us, ear plugs are most likely far superior
+ Experiment: Stereo is sort of 2d. However, its complicated. you can describe a horizontal circle of noise, crudely by altering the two channels. However depth is replaced by loudness. (in the same way size of an object for 2d photos) Now, you know that in real life you can differentiate vertical sounds as well.
edit: ex sound engineer, so none of this is scientific. Please research binaural, and 3D sound. Criticism welcome
I'd argue it depends on the methodology by which they're implementing the technology. They could be using the directionality to amplify the "target" signal and identify the signals that the wearer desires to mute and then run a fast algorithm to reduce that sound.
I am the ideal customer: some hearing loss from my VJ days, but still appreciate frequency response. I render all my music at 192Khz.
Basic hearing aids suck at frequency response. Most drop off at around 8KHz Meanwhile, Apple has created a pipeline for hearing aid. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201466 I haven't used it.
I often work out of noisy cafes. So, I wear Bose Quiet Comfort 20 earbuds. If I forget, I will go back home to fetch them. Have even taken the QC 20's to public concerts to use the noise cancellation feature instead of earplugs.
A friend has worn the simple noise cancelling version of the Hear One to a loud concert. She loves them.
Another friend has the Bragi Dash earbuds and was complaining of some Bluetooth drop-out.
IMO, would rather have a neck band sending out RF than something sitting inside my head. Maybe the new passive WiFi solves that concern at 1/10,000 the power?
"...and people always talk much louder to compensate for the noise. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to hear the server without any extra effort..."
And initially was wondering how he got an audio feed to his server in a restaurant and then was like "Why would he want to listen to his server". And then realized that there are human servers in restaurants.
This is basically the same idea as electronic ear protection of the kind typically used for shooting sports, with the addition of a directional microphone to the existing global microphone.
It works extremely well in that form factor, basically like having Superman ears. Conversations are audible, you can turn up the sensitivity to where you can hear footsteps clearly in a house, and gunshots are reduced to the level of, eg, a heavy book falling off a shelf.
Someone will have to explain the difference between these and your average hearing aids, which perform a very similar function, but tuned by an audiologist to your needs.
Disclaimer: I am not an audiologist, but I am married to one :-).
Because of the way your ears function, the vast majority of people who have hearing impairments have them at specific frequency ranges. Hearing aids do amplify sound somewhat, but they mostly work by pitch shifting voices away from your personal weak spots to wherever your hearing is still strongest. They also do some signal processing to differentiate voice-like noises from other sounds, amplify the voice, and actually mute the non-voice sounds.
For people who have some hearing loss, blanket amplification can be counterproductive and dangerous. Turning up the volume across the board doesn't help at all with differentiating signal from background noise, and can cause what hearing you do have left to degrade much faster than it otherwise might due to the increased stress placed on the ear.
Hearing aids are expensive, because they are a medical device. And they are also only available to people with a hearing deficiency. By not being "hearing aids", these are available to a wider audience.
Syringes are a medical device: they're cheap and available to anyone.
Where are you and why aren't hearing aids available to buy for anyone who wants them? Is that a legislation thing, do hearing aids damage not-as-hearing-impaired people's hearing?
Because syringes are inexpensive, you're making the mistake of thinking there isn't a huge markup due to it being a medical device. I'm pretty sure if you were to buy a syringe for injecting plants or something non-human, they would cost a fraction of what they currently cost.
In these very comments someone talks about their hearing aids costing US$6000, being similar in function to the product being discussed.
This is really like having cheap, off-the shelf reading glasses even though prescription reading glasses are available and attuned to your eyes.
And folks would be interested for similar reasons. Insurance might not cover the testing that often or the device itself, for instance, or someone might not think they have the time to go to that doctor. Maybe it is only a problem every once in a while, and so on.
And like cheap reading glasses, it might not be a perfect solution, but a solution nonetheless.
If the app could filter out distant sounds, or be used to filter directionally -- and do it in a non-crappy way -- then this would be genuinely useful.
Based on the photo on the website, they look very different. Instead of being in/around the ear, they appear to have a piece that sits on the back of the neck. This could be for the battery or for an array of mics that are used for noise canceling and focusing.
Maybe a better analogy is ... if hearing aids are glasses, these are reading glasses.
i.e. off-the-shelf, self-diagnosed, cheap and easy solution for part-time use without getting "medical"
(I say "cheap" because I don't know what the Hearphones will cost but I've helped relatives shop for hearing aids and WOW ... from what I gather, as you step up in price in a company's line of hearing aids, ticking off more boxes in their feature matrix, they're probably just enabled bits of code in an otherwise identical DSP ... and the price increments go like this: $3K-$4K-$5K),
>improve hearing even for those that don't have hearing problems //
That's pretty self-contradictory.
Is it perhaps about people simply not wanting to admit they have hearing difficulties, these make it a "non-medical" issue and so allow people to address their poor hearing by-passing any potential stigma [they apply to themselves].
My mother needed hearing aids for a long time, but wouldn't get them, seemingly "because they're for old people".
Some do, although this may be limited to high-end models?
I have a friend who uses hearing aids. They can tune out background noise, focus on directions, turn off hearing, and even listen to magnetic fields (while debugging circuits). I've occasionally felt a bit envious.
"You’re one of the select few invited to the Bose Corporate Center facilities to demo Bose Hearphones for yourself."
Wow, I feel so special, and all I did was click a link on HN. This sounds like the Bose version of those cheap late-night "as seen in TV" amplifiers. Yeah, Bose is overpriced for what you get, but at least their stuff is if decent quality. Dunno, after too many years of standing in front of a Marshall stack, be it my own or other's, I could see myself interested in this.
I wonder what the side affects of prolonged usage would be. As in, would my ability to block out ambient noises without the device decline from not using the ability?
Their are already headphones let in ambient sound and headphones that fully block ambient sound. I don't think adding a volume knob to the ambient sound is going to change your brain's hearing calibration.
I think the unique part of this, which may have an effect, is that it's selectively blocking ambient noise, and it's meant to be worn during conversation.
I can't think of anyone today who wears noise-cancelling headphones while trying to hear noise from outside the headphones. Everyone I know takes their headphones off to communicate or listen to specific sounds outside the headset.
Who knows, but my point is that there are two slightly different tests here. We already know that wearing noise-cancelling headphones to block _all_ sound doesn't affect our hearing when they're off. It remains to be seen whether using them to filter some sound effects our ability to filter some sound without them.
I'm not hard of hearing but I often have trouble understanding people at noisy meetups or conferences (or hell, parties). This sounds like an awesome solution. I'm sure I'm not the only one. But what compounds the problem is that I seem to be worse than most at understanding accents (thanks, growing up in middle America). I've gotten better recently, but still.
That means you probably have hearing damage. I read an article recently regarding this, many younger people have issues with this and it IS physical damage.
You are probably talking about what we call a hidden hearing loss. It is called like this because there are currently no clinical tests available.
The reason for this is probably a selective death of synapses in the inner ear. We separate between three types of auditory nerve fibers (ANFs): High spontaneous rate (HSR), low spontaneous rate (LSR) and mid spontaneous rate (MSR). Basically the HSRs are our high gain fibers used for low sound levels. Their response saturates quite early. LSRs on the other hand are low gain fibers used for higher levels.
the ANF synapse can release a large amount of neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft (in this case glutamate) the problem is that high concentrations of glutamate can are actually harmful and HSR fibers seem to be quite sensitive to these high concentrations. If there is a long term exposure to a noisy environment the high glutamate concentration might selectively kills your HSR fibers. The problem with this is that your threshold of hearing is still normal as there is no damage to the HSR fibers which you need to detect low level sounds so your audiogram looks perfectly fine. But you will start to get problems if you are in situations where you need your full dynamic range e.g. understanding speech in a noisy environments.
As you can see from my writing, this is a current subject of research so we do not know for sure but it seems like that you have to be quite careful with long time noise exposure even if the sound levels are below what is normally considered as harmful.
Its always good to have yourself checked from time to time. But there is nothing you can do about sensory hearing loss, hidden or non hidden (apart from hearing aids). That's why you should be careful to start with.
There are some indications that people with damage might be more at risk for the hearing loss to get worse. Maybe because they where more sensitive to start with. So everyone protect your ears!!
Maybe I shouldn't say 'often', but when I'm in a room loud enough that we're both leaning in to shout at each other a bit. But I've left enough concerts with my ears ringing that I wouldn't be surprised to have a bit of hearing damage.
This reminds me strongly of when cigarette companies started to produce nicotine patches. Without sounding too cynical (it does look like a product that could be useful for people who just happen to be in noisey environments a lot) , I can't help but think Bose are trying to position themselves at the top of a new product line: hearing aids for people who damaged their own hearing through excessively loud earphone music but rebranded to not be considered so obviously as "hearing aids" in the current sense. Not that that's necessary all that bad, it makes sense for a top consumer audio company to tackle this "problem" if it is a thing; I'm by no means an ear expert but I wouldn't be surprised if a surge in hearing aid demand is due as the effects of prolonged earphone usage starts to surface.
I have Bose noise cancelling headphones...possibly the best purchase I have ever made since they allow me to basically turn off the environment when on a train (or plane but I commute about 1h each way daily via train so that's where they shine). My soundy friends tell me Bose sound quality is not in the upper echolon (my hearing is not fine grained enough to hear a difference so I don't really care) but the filtering is really amazing. Not surprised they improve on that and branch out a bit. I usually listen to stuff without vocals (X meets metal: https://www.youtube.com/user/331Erock) when reading as I can't concentrate if there's lyrics.
I have the QC 35's, and I have to agree with you. It was, I thought, an extravagant purchase, but after having them for a month I think not. I use them at least an hour a day and they are amazing, albeit expensive.
I never understood my poor ability to focus sound could be a thing until I read Douglas Coupland's account of sneezing out a lump of...well..his lung...his brain? I don't really know...but it's a great anecdote:
This is fascinating, because for years I've noticed that I have an acute opposite thing - I can separate sounds drastically when otherwise it shouldn't make sense. As in, I can hear a conversation, focus on it, and pick it up faintly even though it's something like 15 feet away and around a corner and mixed in with lots of general white noise. It's not a 100% thing but I think it came from years and years of practice in music (identifying different instruments, their lines/notes) and also intentionally eavesdropping conversations at bars and stuff (to practice writing better dialog).
It's a very interesting condition to have, because sometimes certain sounds will jump out at me in ways that wouldn't bother most other people - for example, the newest GMC TV commercials on US TV have this marimba chime thing that kicks in at the very end and it's a purposefully off-tempo, non-harmonized cacophony that drives me effing bonkers.
As someone who is unilaterally deaf, this is very interesting to me. I hear fine in one ear, but am completely deaf in the other.
People who hear in stereo seem to isolate particular sounds (like a voice) much easier from background noise without any/much conscious thought; whereas, I have to consciously focus on filtering out the ambient noise. Having 2 audio channels seems to allow for a sort of spacial filtering/differentiation to pinpoint particular streams of sounds. I have found that turning my head in space allows me some ability to differentiate foreground/background noise by comparing their relative change in volumes as my ear changes direction. That is more fit for deciphering sounds coming from a distance and not helpful in the case of a close conversation. If I am having trouble with a conversation in a noisy setting I normally revert to lip-reading. Unfortunately lip-reading makes it difficult to read body language and facial expressions.
As a young kid I felt a bit left out of the experience of stereo music. I experimented with setting up several of my family's radios around my room and tuning their equalizers differently to roughly separate parts of the music. By moving and turning through the room, I was able to experience the music in a slightly more spacial way.
Long time reader, first time caller...er commenter. I might be biased since I work for them, but at www.stages.co we've JUST unveiled a headphone and a tabletop product (that lets you use any existing headphones) that I think this thread would find relevant. Directional listening, noice cancellation, noise reduction, high quality audio, user configurable admittance criteria - we have it all.
Are those products you have at stages.co already developed and built or are they in development? Why would someone use that desktop device instead of the headphones?
We'll be bringing developed products to CES in January 2017 and will be announcing details on our production rollout plan soon. The reason for the desktop product is to allow you to use any existing set of headphones you already own, but still take advantage of our microphone array, unwanted noise reduction, music quality improvements, etc. Basically, we wanted everyone to be able to take advantage of our tech, even if they have a pair of headphones they already love.
I think you mean the QC30's.
I just got those and the app seems different.
I'm betting they're probably the same hardware with different software and will be sold separately. Because... more money
Mmm, according to the description of the iOS Bose Hear app:
Companion app for Bose® Hearphones™ conversation-enhancing headphones to let you hear the world on your terms. This app is not compatible with Bose QC30 Headphones.
Now I'm curious if the Hearphones have the same ANC capabilities as the QC30s + the extra stuff. That would be interesting.
Hearphones page says: "Directional microphones help you focus on conversations in noisy places. Focus, amplify or reduce real-world sounds to the level you want." So the hearphones don't just do cancelation of repetitive-signal type noise, in addition they will amplify sound from the direction you're facing to help carry on a conversation.
The Bose QC series don't have that. Nor does the PocketTalker product mentioned in another comment here.
really? I own the QC30s and I had non idea that was not the best for noise cancelling. why would they design it to b be less effective than the other models?
Information was from the top negative review on Amazon: "I called Bose support and they told me the QC30 was never intended to be a replacement for the QC20. They said the NC wouldn’t be as strong and wasn’t intended to be. That is why one is designated QuietControl and not QuietComfort. "
I missed the reply from Bose: "We apologize for the information you received from our support team as it is not accurate. The Quietcontrol 30 headphones should offer a comparable level of noise cancellation to the previous QC20 model. Although the level of noise cancellation is adjustable on the QC30, they should perform just as well as the QC20."
We (in Alango Technologies) liked the HearPhones for this product type. Actually, we liked it so much that two years ago we used it to name the category of Bluetooth headsets with hearing enhancement and assistive listening functionality as HearPhones™ (www.alango.com/hearphones, www.old.alango.com/hearing/index). As a DSP software provider, we started working on a licensable software package that allows transformation of a Bluetooth headset into a powerful hearing aid. Of course, BOSE were aware of it as well and, apparently, liked the idea and the name so much that they decided to name their upcoming product HearPhones™. We, obviously, don’t like their idea… Anyway, our company will introduce our own concept product from HearPhones™ category. It will be a stylish Bluetooth headset with fully customizable hearing enhancement capability. You will get much more information about it very soon (hopefully next week) on www.wearandhear.com
So basically this is augmentation of the ear. Focus sounds you want to ear, block the ones you don't. Pretty cool, but at the same time its kind of the first step towards the concept shown in Black Mirror where you just block out people you don't want to hear or see. They just become a muffled background noise.
These seem to me, at least, to be a clever, premium re-branding of hearing aids. I found myself wanting some despite having only moderate (if detectable) hearing loss, especially for the ability to focus in on a conversation in a loud environment. That is a very draining situation for me to find myself in.
Not limited to those with bad hearing, auditory processing issues are common amongst those with ASD / autism spectrum disorders / Aspergers / The Geek Syndrome.
This looks like an excellent product, and great work to their engineers.
Neat prospect, but I'm not convinced this is a big enough problem for the majority of people which is how this is marketed. I would also expect a price point comparative to other hearing aids to further distance the average consumer.
I have trouble hearing in noisy environments. When I was young I was diagnosed with an auditory processing problem so I assume it's related to that.
When I meet with someone in a noisy environment I just accept that I'm only going to understand every other word that someone says. Which leads to a lot of smiling and nodding blankly.
I know very expensive hearing aids could handle this for me but it's not a big enough problem for me to check into that route. However if this was $150 bucks or so I might get some. Though I expect the price tag will be more like $600.
Interesting, to me I would never carry an additional independent hearing aid for this problem. I generally have my keys, wallet, smartphone, and possibly music headphones. If this could be paired in with existing headphones - awesome, otherwise I can't see many people adding an additional headphone to the aforementioned list without a larger problem. I do like the expansion of the Bose objective though with this.
Think of augmented reality. It's generally conceived as modifying what you see, but why couldn't you benefit from a computer able to modify what you hear? It ought to be possible to do a lot of Google Glass-like things, not to mention Black Mirror-like, without looking as much like a space cadet or demanding as much of the hardware. (As a hearing aid user I was thinking about this 10 years ago.)
Hm, okay. Not quite Google-Glass level overkill personal tech in the wild, but I'm not sure these will find a good patch of target market. Not quite hearing aids, not nearly as cool as headphones intending to keep the world out...I just have my doubts as to how well these are going to be adopted.
Oh, and if there comes a time when there are YouTube/Vine videos of jerks coming up behind people wearing these and screaming and/or otherwise messing with them, well, I wouldn't be surprised. Not that I'd approve, mind you. But would I laugh? No comment.
Kudos to Bose for marketing. Can't wait to see the execution.
Today, people who wore glasses or had to wear hearing aid were those with vision and hearing problems. We are moving to an era where we would voluntarily wear visual/hearing aid all the time because they enhance our natural abilities so much that it would be hard to do without it. We are now starting to augment the most basic senses with technology, in a way that is affordable enough that everyone will be doing it. In that sense, this is the dawn of an era of bioelectronic super humans.
I am totally bothered by noise in the bars. Or the fact that you go to sports bar, but you cannot hear the audio. I was thinking of building on Pi something that would plug to TVs audio output, and then broadcast that to local Wifi in the bar. So that smartphone that's connected to same wifi could receive the audio and you could listen to it on your smartphone. Turns out there is someone already doing it: http://www.limeonair.com
Like a hearing aid induction loop (a transmitter that plugs in to a venues mono-out and [I gather] transmits on a frequency for specially hearing aids).
We have similar directional, sound-suppressing "headphones" for use in the military. Specifically I used them as a gunner on a Bradley (BFV) and a gunner on a regular ole Humvee gun truck. This kind of thing is pretty impressive. I could talk to other gunners in other turrets in our security element that were reasonably close without using the radio. You could still hear everything happening around you -- incredibly important -- without blast sounds and weapons fire causing your ears to ring.
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There's more money to be made in certified medical devices. My father worked in medical device certification before he retired and fought a long and eventually losing battle with a businessman, who wanted to have his vacuum cleaner product certified as a medical device(ostensibly it was supposed to somehow deliver drugs by spraying them on the floor).
I humbly submit that they need to work on the name. I've had a long day and not much sleep and my eyes didn't recognise the difference between "hearphones" and "headphones"; the two even sound pretty similar. I know it's intentional and clever, but it's quite subtle. Especially if you don't have good hearing...
I have always used my QC20 noise cancelling earbuds in this way so I'm glad it will get better. Just last weekend in a noisy eatery I put them in and my SO and her friend thought I was listening to music, but I said, "No, now I can hear YOU". Cool.
As someone who lost hearing in one ear as a young kid Its always exciting to see companies work on this space. Honestly from their marketing websites its not 100% clear where this is going but I do look forward to seeing
they need to get into something they can rent at clubs and concert venues. Clubs are ridiculous. Every time I go to a club, I don't wear hearing protection, and this means that I am consciously making a choice to lose some of my hearing. I should be able to get some foam things that reduce my hearing damage to something reasonable.
but imagine if I could rent some kind of insert that actually lets me talk with others who also have theirs (because it filters using also a microphone.) how awesome would that be.
clubs and concerts, dance halls etc suck. waaay too loud.
looks good - they should give them out at concerts, sell them or rent them. Why isn't anyone selling them at concerts anyway? The cost of goods at scale (millions of pairs per year) must be miniscule, it's basically free money that could be shared with concert venues and has no downsides of any kind whatsoever.
why aren't these being sold at concerts? (vending machines etc)?
I guess people just don't care. (not enough 'demand').
> Every time I go to a club, I don't wear hearing protection, and this means that I am consciously making a choice to lose some of my hearing.
Maybe you should consciously make a different choice, such as bring ear plugs with you. There's plenty of brands that come in a container that fit easily on a keychain so they're not forgotten.
What I can recommend (if you have the disposable cash for it), is to get your doctor to prescribe (or pay for it yourself) custom ear canal shaped plugs.
The custom moulding can be mounted on most high grade earbud bases.
If you want to get really fancy and you play in a band, you can fit the custom plugs with in ear monitors, thus basically sealing your ear from damage on stage.
For the guy worried about hipness.... custom plugs will be completely hidden in the lighting of clubs, so don't worry, you'll still be able to buy drinks at the beer for someone that catches your eye without being laughed at.
I'm not going to be the only one at a club who brings hearing protection with me. It's not hip. Clubs need to start giving them out either for free, or renting them, or something. it needs to be available on location there. I don't see anyone else wearing them.
If you're making health decisions based on what's hip and what's not, you need to reevaluate your priorities.
Many earplugs can be very unobtrusive in appearance unless people are looking directly at your ear canal. Not to mention that many, in clubs, are already going to be drunk or otherwise inebriated. Unless you wear bulky hearing protection like the guys on a flight line crew, few will notice, and those that do won't remember.
Most ear plugs I've used in clubs or at concerts actually improve (or at the very least make no difference) ability to have conversations.
Probably the best way to have a conversation with someone in a loud club is to stick your finger in your ear. Once you've sealed the hole completely, you can hear them fine!
Yeah, what you want is an earplug that will basically cut out the noise, and then a sophisticated device like this, to allow you to hear directionally, or to reduce background noise, to emphasize speech, and so on.
I'd be interested to see what happens to the noise level of a bar room with everyone using these. Would the clarity of sound reduce everyone's volume to conversational?
When I go with family to the shooting club, we have these hearing protectors that double as hearing enhancement. This seems like a natural extension off the range.
really interested in the technology behind this. Obviously non voice frequencies can be filtered but how are they determining which voices are too far away to matter?
I'm sure I could probably read up more, but if these work it's definitely a "shut up and take my money" situation for me. I'm about as ADD as it gets and I have a really hard time when there are multiple conversations going and I try to listen to them all.
If they can't do the acoustics right, this is the solution. But the focus should be to push good architectural design. Which is lacking almost everywhere.
There are passive versions available as well. Obviously they won't have the same capabilities as active noise canceling, though.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BCR0MNO/
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The technology behind them isn't groundbreaking, but I can think of some good uses for devices like this.
Basically it appears to be a combination of noise cancelling and directional microphones so that you hear more of what you're pointed towards. If you want to get a better feel for how these devices could work, I'd recommend taking a look into directional microphones.
I'm not saying the technology isn't useful, but this has been done before. It hasn't worked before, so when it appears at the top of HN I assumed (given the higher standards we usually apply here) there was a reason beyond an okay marketing website with vague details. Which I didn't expect from Bose (which in my mind == quality and the website wasn't) nor the top of HN.
Bose has not delivered in tech since the 70s. Color me skeptical, but this seems like a cheap hack for an existing product of theirs with a crapload of dodgy marketing.
Their noise canceling headset and earbud products are better than anything on the market, so that's not quite right.
I use the QC20 earbuds, which are even better at noise canceling than the QC15 headphones. As a developer, they are my number one tool to get into the zone.
They're also very calming on airplanes and elsewhere with a lot of low- or high-frequency noise.
I have tried a number of noise canceling headsets, but Bose is the best, something reviews also confirm.
(Audio quality is also in the top range, according to me. Not quite as good as my Sennheiser HD25, but close enough.)
You're probably referring to their speakers but their noise canceling earphones and headphones are widely considered to be excellent. When I was shopping for noise canceling earphones (I work at home, with three kids 5 and under) my research led me to buy Bose.
Is it just me or does this landing page suck? The top banner doesn't go all the way to the edges, logo is square but buttons are circular, grey icons on a black background, only black and white, etc, etc. Then you get this absolutely butchered review:
> I was with my husband at Smokey Bones
What is that?
> …The room was very noisy as it always is there because they have tv's going and lots of music and people always talk much louder to compensate for the noise.
I'll let this one slide
> I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to hear the server without any extra effort order my meal with smooth going.
I have decent hearing, but when I'm in a noisy environment like a bar, I can hear but can't understand what other people are saying. It's why I don't like going to bars/pubs with live performances or ambient music.
People think I'm bored or brooding because I'm not talking to anyone, but I just can't understand anything anyone says, so I can't participate in a conversation.