Oh Say Can You See?

[RJSakowski]

This is all new to me.
I find myself asking my wife to repeat what she said. I'm beginning to think I need to have my ears checked.
Did it start by hearing but not being able to make out the words/meaning?

My wife got me a decibel meter with clock and humidity for the shop Hint -hint

I have a similar problem. I can hear sounds but it's as if the speaker is mumbling. Background noise makes things worse. Invariably, I have to ask my wife to repeat what she said. This is apparently quite common as human speech communication largely occurs over a faily narrow band of mid range frequencies.

I have tinnitus in my right ear stemming from a mishap with muzzle flash some 45 years ago and that doesn't help matters.

 

[Provincial]

On hearing the wife: I have always had problems hearing speech. Before I got hearing aids I had trouble understanding people during a phone call or when a movie or TV show depicted a telephone conversation. I later figured out that my hearing was pretty normal below the range of human speech, dipped through the range of human speech, and tapered up above the range of human speech to normal.

This explained the difficulties I was having, since telephones were designed to only carry the frequencies of speech, since higher and lower frequencies were not necessary (in the minds of Western Electric engineers) and only complicated the design of equipment. It also explained why I could hear clocks tick and birds chirp when no one else could. Without hearing much of lower frequencies, the high-pitched sounds stood out because of lack of background noise!

 

[Provincial]

On a lighter note, I asked the hearing aid lady that adjusts my programming if there was another setting for identifying and eliminating common background noises. I could bring in recordings of those noises for her to analyze and counter. If possible, I would call it "wife mode." She actually thought it was pretty funny, but unfortunately was not possible.

 

[Provincial]

I just had cataract surgery (steroid abuse for decades) I was always very near sighted, and actually had lasik about 20 years ago. When you go for cataract surgery, you get to pick your focal range (you can go one eye for distance and one eye for near as well.) They have bifocal versions, but I have heard nothing but bad about them and insurance won't cover them (at about $3500 per eye). Since I was always very near sighted, I chose to go far sighted. Being able to see clearly at 100 yards, it sounded great! Trust me, it's not a situation of "never needing glasses again". My distance is great, but anything 5' or closer is about invisible. I ALWAYS have glasses handy now to see my phone, labels, computer and of course, working in the shop.
When the time comes, I would highly suggest choosing slightly near sighted (maybe a -1.00 to -1.50) The mono vision is no go as you will lose depth perception. Sorry, the topic came up here and I wish someone told me all of this prior to surgery.

This is why I chose the "far" mode and always wear progressive lenses. The glasses only slightly improve far vision, and the progressives let me focus with a tilt of the head. I do use 3.0 reading glasses for close work, and 3.0 "cheaters" in my welding helmets. The cheaters work well with my glasses on or off, but I always leave them on as safety glasses.

Another reason for always wearing glasses is that I became used to them after almost 60 years, and they had saved an eye at least 3 times during my life.

 

[Provincial]

I have a similar problem. I can hear sounds but it's as if the speaker is mumbling. Background noise makes things worse. Invariably, I have to ask my wife to repeat what she said. This is apparently quite common as human speech communication largely occurs over a faily narrow band of mid range frequencies.

I have tinnitus in my right ear stemming from a mishap with muzzle flash some 45 years ago and that doesn't help matters.

When I would ask my Mother to repeat something, she invariably started at the middle of the sentence, instead of the beginning. She never could correct this habit, even though it frustrated her to have to repeat from the beginning.

One of the issues of deafness is that it takes a while to realize you are being spoken to, and then have to concentrate on determining what is being said. Often, you miss words and have to try to fill them in by the context of the other words. You have to hear the whole sentence to get the drift of what is being said. Sometimes you misinterpret, and look either stupid or crazy when you give an inappropriate response.

 

[Just for fun]

I've been wearing glasses for about 55 years, getting close to needing hearing aids. I have a real hard time with accents, my wife is a good interpreter.

 

[B2]

Geeze Guys, I cannot hear much at all above about 500Hz (down about 25db below this frequency), even with my expensive phonak aids, and my vision continues to change for the worst. 65 years with glasses. But what are the alternatives if you want to continue to build!

 

[brino]

looked up the P?N of the frames and found a source online for the exact same frame, I paid almost $200 for the frames from the eye doc and the online price for the exact same make and model was just $25 with shipping.

That is absolutely disgusting!
No wonder the industry has such a bad reputation.

While this business was profitable, B and L quit the glasses business simply, because making contact lens was so much more profitable.

Were they the ones charging more for the "extended wear" contacts that were identical to the lower-priced daily disposable lenses?

This is all new to me.
I find myself asking my wife to repeat what she said. I'm beginning to think I need to have my ears checked.
Did it start by hearing but not being able to make out the words/meaning?

At my wife's insistence I did get my hearing checked ~5 years ago.
The results were good, but I was paying close attention during these tests.

I think the problem is that she starts talking while I am deep in thought about a work problem or shop issue.
I keep asking her to call my name and wait until I look at her before starting a sentence.

The hearing place is still pestering me to come back on a regular schedule.......

Brian

 

[7milesup]

I think the problem is that she starts talking while I am deep in thought about a work problem or shop issue.
I keep asking her to call my name and wait until I look at her before starting a sentence.

Cripes. Same here, but she simply thinks that I am deaf. There is something about the female voice for me that I have trouble with (not joking). When I was flying, I was able to understand the male controllers very well but when a female controller came on the line, it was sometimes a struggle for me. Many times I would look over at the copilot and ask him what she said. Sometimes it reminded me of the last half of this Airplane clip.

There was a study done a number of years ago with retired airline captains and hearing loss. When the retirees were tasked with understanding and reading back a normal conversation, their accuracy rate was in the neighborhood of 60% or so (maybe less, don't remember). When an aviation clearance or set of instructions was read to them, their accuracy rate was literally 100% because they knew what to expect, and even if they missed a word, they were able to easily fill in the blank.

 

[B2]

Huh? What? Roger Roger Leroy!

Yea, same problem! Women tend to have higher pitched voices (higher frequency). Since our hearing frequency response rolls off so fast with frequency more of their word sounds are missing than for men. The "sh" and similar airy filled sounds are not heard at all. "Swing" becomes "ng". "She becomes "he". By the time you interpret it "Sandra" becomes "Andrew". When it is a guy who is talking and he happens to have a high pitched voice (Tenor voice) I cannot understand him either.

My hearing loss was pretty sudden. After it initially occurred, and my wife would be talking to me, there would commonly be a word in her sentence that I miss understood. I would be thinking surely she would NOT say that! Sometimes my dirty mind kicked in! What was is she was saying? By the time I figured it out she had already said two more sentences which I had totally missed! What? Huh? And yes, it helps if first she slaps you in the face to get your attention. At least then you can look at her lips moving, which helps. Another problem is that she starts the sentence and then move into another room while talking..... Then there is the problem when you say you do not know what is going on... "you know I told you about this earlier." Huh?

As time has progressed I keep the closed captions on TV always showing.

A couple of pet peeves: TV the dialog is too fast and soft, then the closed captions go by faster than I can read or are three or four sentences behind. Most of these are prerecorded why are the close captions so far behind and commonly miss spelled or missing words? When the scene changes they just drop the rest of the close captions! Then there are the sport shows, like NFL. Why is it that they dub in the crowd noise so loud that you cannot hear an announcer. You know that they control this because these guys are in an enclose booth with good microphones and they can hear each other. Then there are the restaurants and bars that play background music. They turn up the sound loud enough to be uncomfortable... and then the crowd talks louder, so they turn up the music level even higher....... It becomes a shouting match where I hear nothing... just pain.

Sorry..