SoundPrint: Telling those of us with auditory sensitivities where not to go | Hacker News Reader

SoundPrint: Telling those of us with auditory sensitivities where not to go

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I am one of those people. I love music, and my hearing has recently been tested as "perfect", but I got the hearing test at the request of my wife because she thought I had a hearing problem. For me, everything is good until I am exposed to a loud environment. People around me can talk/understand each other just fine, but I get overwhelmed. After discussing my problem with the audiologist, he recommended a neurologist. I don't think there's a cure for what I have, and I've lived with it as an adult for 40 years. I just downloaded this app to my (Android) phone. I see that it has 10k downloads so far. I am looking forward to using it.

A few years ago I realized that my dyslexia in the form of dyscalculia wasn't isolated. I have some minor auditory dyslexia which wasn't a surprise as much as OH that's what's happening. I rely on lip reading for context clues to fill in the gaps where I didn't understand what was said, and subtitles on pretty much everything. I have also have excellent hearing but for whatever reason my brain likes to hear gibberish instead of words at the beginning of most people's sentences. I was never diagnosed as a kid because my reading skills were above average and being forced to write each step out in math was a good thing for me. (I just can't hold numbers in my head and they will twist if I try to concentrate on them.) In the long run, it hasn't been an issue for for my career, I let the computers do math and have rigorous double check habits. It has proven an issue with interactions as it can be difficult to know when to respond to someone as I can't tell who they speaking to if I don't have line of sight. I know that can make me feel cold and like I'm ignoring them intentionally when I just don't want to be the person who just constantly goes 'what?' all the time and explaining it is a rather tedious thing when it's someone who is just a work colleague.

Might it be misophonia?

Might be if you have what seems like an extreme over-reaction to outsiders or haven't realized you may have Misophonia and can't figure out why you're feeling tension or "anxiety" for no apparent reason.

Misophonia is based in a severe dislike of very specific sorts of sounds (like chewing or swallowing), not a general cacophony. There may be overlap, but people with misophonia are usually quite conscious of the sounds they cannot stand.

I have both - well, I believe I do, as I've never had APD diagnosed. But I agree they are extremely different.

I actually really enjoy the sound of a crowded room. I used to be a DJ and party organizer and a room full of happy people is a peaceful and delightful sound to me ( much unlike mouth sounds, and pouring liquids and plenty others ).

Still, picking out a single voice from a crowd is incredibly difficult for me. That wasn't always the case. I believe it started in my late 20s, which is interesting because I'd noticed around then that crowded rooms started to sound different for me. The hum of the room was more distinct.

My wife has a very distinct voice that I can easily pick out in a crowd and I sometimes wonder if that was an unknown part of the initial attraction. At the very least we can still go out and have a conversation in loud public places, which is something I can't do very well with many other people.

Agreed they are likely aware that there are sounds they can't stand, but they might not know why, and it can be difficult not knowing why.

I should have clarified. I'm at ease in loud environments (bars, rock concerts, shooting ranges), but I get overwhelmed trying to understand what nearby people are saying. It's not a social anxiety issue, but something about my auditory processing. I have no trouble picking out a weak CW signal in a noisy HF environment, or listening to SSB phone on a crowded channel. It's a "saturation" issue. If the noise is loud enough, it overwhelms my ability to track the quieter sounds, and I get stressed out when trying to do so.

There's a lot of people that have this; I'm sure there's a formal diagnosis for it, but the people I know have sensory processing disorder, a co-morbidity of ADHD/autism, where they get overloaded in too noisy spaces, or as you describe, are unable to isolate individual voices in a loud space - to be fair, I think most people just pretend they can hear each other in areas like that.

My daughter was recently diagnosed with a similar thing, APD (auditory processing disorder). Her hearing is perfect, and she aced all the auditory tests except one - they played her the sound of a lot of voices talking in the background, and she had to listen to one of them. Despite being able to hear perfectly, something in the processing in her brain makes that an impossible task for her. The specific difficulty is "auditory stream segregation".

In her report, they mentioned software called "LISn and Learn". Looks like it's now called SoundStorm: https://www.soundstorm.app/clinicians/the-evidence. Maybe that might be of interest to you, although it looks like it's oriented at kids.

This is super interesting to me! Thanks for posting. I may write about it in the future :)

No worries! Feel free to email if you have questions.

Looks interesting, but I'm not going to fork out >$200 just to give it a try.

This could be ‘hidden hearing loss’. It’s a catch-all term for hearing problems in noisy backgrounds even when sensitivity to quiet sounds (what is tested by an audiologist) is normal. It’s not clear what causes it, and it may not be one thing, but it’s not uncommon.

I am very sensitive to loud noises bright lights etc. I've always thought that my nervous system is basically too reactive - the gain is set too high.

I recently started taking gabapentin for an unrelated problem - what do you know? My problem with sensory overstimulation has disappeared.

Gabapentin modulates gaba, which is a little bit like the gain control in the brain. I won't be able to take the gabapentin forever, but it's so useful I will be looking for something herbal to help raise Gaba when I roll off gabapentin. CBD might be useful.

I’m a fan of Soundprint. I’ve used their app since they were featured in the New Yorker a few years ago. I try to avoid loud restaurants and their quiet list is a great way to discover new places:

https://www.soundprint.co/locations/united-states/new-york/n...

On improvements, how about incorporating the user's judgment of how busy/full the venue is? A quiet reading at 3pm on Tuesday in a restaurant is not helpful to somebody looking for a venue for a Friday evening dinner.

love that idea.

FYI This idea is already included in the SoundPrint app

Is there something similar for people with visual sensitivies? Bright lights mess me up. Even something as simple as the headlight on a bicycle can trip me up. Bright billboards in the dark are the worst.

I'm completely with you on this and have not found an app at this time, but if I do I will CERTAINLY be posting it.

At the moment I just wear sunglasses or transition glasses when I go out. A better solution would be ideal.

Author here- Thanks for the interest and ideas. This blog is a hobby of mine to cover tech that makes the world more accessible to everyone, so it was cool to see so many people with more ideas, interest, and questions.

Feel free to reach out if y'all have any questions or tech you'd like to see blogged about in the future.

Mark Proksch explains 'auditory sensitivities'

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=sB7N4hcvjm0

What prevents a bad actor from wailing into their phone for 15 seconds and making a submission?

I suppose you'd be better off staying away from them anyway.

It should become statistically insignificant / an outlier / literal noise with enough submissions.

My understanding is they simply average the SoundChecks to give the oveall score and haven't looked at outliers yet...so I guess if you're very against a particular venue you can simply scream into your phone for 15 seconds repeatedly and give them a very bad average score XD

My first impression before reading the article was that this was for people with perfect pitch to avoid areas blasting out of tune notes playing in public spaces. Very common in train stations, crosdswalks and elevator sounds etc.

It's painful, but you do get used to it.

Or just... wear your headphones all the time, like I do. Would be nice if people didn't do that, but, well.

Some people can't get used to it.

They're not out of tune, they're just on... nonwestern scales. :)

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