Why do restaurants wreak such havoc on your hearing? The most common sort of age-related hearing loss begins the in the highest frequencies (1000Hz and above). Most speech tones are lower than this, however missing out on high pitches makes it particularly difficult when sound localization is required. Bustling busy restaurants with high ceilings are notorious for creating a lot of acoustic “noise”. Many times you will be trying to hold a conversation with more than one individual, who may not be immediately in front of you, while their voice is competing with dozens of others in an acoustically-challenging room.
Hearing loss in restaurants is usually the first sign of age-related hearing loss (or any other sort of progressive high frequency loss). The same is true for difficulty in conference rooms, conference calls, or airplanes – making it particularly difficult for busy businesspeople. All of these environments have a lot of acoustical competition. It is ironic that we evaluate your hearing in a quiet sound-proof booth, so many times your degree of listening difficulty is underestimated by a routine hearing test. Usually in a 1-on-1 quiet environment there is much less hearing trouble.
A real world test of hearing aid function is critical, which is why we stand behind our money-back policy if your hearing cannot be satisfactorily improved.