Comment by jweather
4 days ago
Same... can't read anything if I can hear someone talking, even if I don't want to listen to them. Music and noise-cancelling headphones make it all better. I can't understand anything if more than one person is talking at the same volume. Maybe that's just normal and I'm bad at lip reading, though.
As far as anecdata, I've worn noise-cancelling headphones at least 40 hours a week for the past 18 years. Granted, my formative years pre-date noise cancellation, but I haven't noticed any impact to my hearing or audio processing. Pretty sure I'd be listening to music much louder without noise cancellation.
Aligning visual content with the words being spoken can be helpful in cases like this.
I agree that I have taken care of my hearing despite doing what I want for the most part.
Now with small aliens roaming the homestead, being able to tune it out to access the well developed trained focus mode is useful.
At the same time, I'm not sure if anyone's using apps like Brain.fm or Endel to help keep some noise going to the brain, just not silence.
I have used brain.fm for a lot of years when I'd remember to (meaning I needed it), and recently started experimenting with Endel, which has been more useful than I anticipated.
> I can't understand anything if more than one person is talking at the same volume. Maybe that's just normal and I'm bad at lip reading, though.
I want to say it's normal, but it's also known as sensory or auditory processing disorder and it's not uncommon in neurodiverse people. Learning some lip reading or just observing someone's mouth movements helps me in those situations, but it's far from ideal.