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> Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out.

I don't hold out much hope because as far as I can tell it's done to make everyone "shut up and drink". I could believe it adds at least 50% to sales because when you can't hear a word anyone says, all you can do is smile and nod and take a swig. And if the place is already full anyway, they don't care if you leave, you'll be replaced. What matters is whoever is in there taking up a space is drinking as fast as possible.

Of course, people who get substantially drunk (which is to say, customers who spend) also don't care because they're not really listening closely or making conversational sense anyway and their pain tolerance is way up, so it's just a good time to them.

Even more cynically, it also keeps the place "cool" because all the old, past-it fogeys like me don't even bother going in. From this sample of one, someone who thinks the music is too loud is un-hip, isn't adding to any hookup appeal (either not in the market or pushing the creepy end of the age range) and won't even spend much because they can't get really hammered because the hangover will take them out for two days and they can't afford to lose a weekend.

It's depressing to think of the different ways people are treated like livestock on a factory farm.

It's depressing to think of the different ways livestock are treated like livestock on a factory farm, too.

Factory farms are hell on earth.

I need to find the article about the multistory pig farm in China. The whole lifecycle from piglet to fattening up and slaughter all in one convenient location.

At least livestock gets to grow up in pasture before they’re sent to the feedlots.

This is, in fact, not always common. I guess it probably depends on the country/region to some extent.

I was thinking of cattle but totally forgot about pigs and chickens.

Not all livestock is so lucky to have been born a cow.

Not just restaurants and bars. Artificial sounds is everywhere.

There was a musician (fairly accomplished in his field) who woke up one day and started hating all music because he realized you cannot escape it. He wrote a book about it but I forget his name.

Interesting.

As an aside, I searched for "musician book can't escape music" and your comment was on the front page of the Google results in sixth position. In fact it was in nearly every search I tried. I couldn't find such a book with moderate trying, just a BBC Point of View transcript on the same thing.

It's personally not a problem I've really noticed in my day to day (for example, today I would only hear music on my headphones at work and as part of TV others in the house are watching at home), though I probably don't spend my time in the same places a musician would.

Apple AirPods Pro are doing all of this now. They’ll isolate people in front of you, can reject background noise but allow voice, etc. They can also correct both music audio and “transparency” audio using your Audiogram. Unfortunately for me, they average both ears and perform the same correction on both ears and I have notable hearing loss only on one side.

I don’t see any reason proper hearing aids can’t already be doing it now though I am sure some of them are but probably the even more ridiculously priced $8k+ models.

Nuheara is also in this space but marketed and designed more specifically to be a low budget hearing aid replacement. With a similar pride to AirPods Pro.

They do do this, and they have for 20+ years.

> Meanwhile, I hope the trend of playing louder and louder music in cafes, restaurants and bars dies out. It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss.

I thought it's well established that they're doing it entirely on purpose. Restaurants, cafes and bars don't make money on you chilling out and having a good time with friends; they make money on you buying food and drinks. They want you to order and consume ASAP until you're full and leave, freeing the table for the next group of customers. Loud music that prevents you from having conversations is how they make this happen.

I've been to quite empty restaurants doing the same thing though. The thing is, a lot of people seem to love it, even though they're struggling to talk to the people next to them. I don't understand it at all personally

This explanation doesn't really work for the cafes that allow people to take up space at tables for long periods just guilt-ordering a minimal amount.

The only thing worse for a cafe than to be full of people who aren't in a hurry to leave, is to be empty. During slow business hours, the venue will happily cut customers some slack, because as long as they're seen at tables, they're doing free marketing for the place. See: social proof.

> It's an accessibility nightmare, especially (but not only) for people with hearing loss.

I can't make out any conversation in a noisy environment so usually switch to try-to-filter-noise-and-fail plus some amateur form of lip reading which works ok for a casual conversation but not for a more serious one. Hearing is "ok" enough though when testing, so no clue what it is.

It helps a lot when the ambient noise level reduced by a few db and tuning down the music helps a lot.

I'm exactly the same, end up doing a lot of nod-and-smile which isn't ideal! My hearing isn't great in the high frequencies, but nothing major.

Same here. I have a (I think) very good ear in silent environments,for example I can hear a very faint sound at night, but I always struggled following conversations in music clubs or bar with high music volumes. I always end up nodding and saying "yeah yeah" even if I have no remote idea of what the other person is saying.

Edit: but OTOH I see people having actual conversations in those same environments, so I guess it doesn't affect everyone in the same way, and it's not either something fully related to how my eardrums are capable of working...

My experience is exactly the same. I doubt everyone is simply pretending they have any idea what everyone else is saying, so it must be something wrong with me.

I’ve had my hearing tested. It’s within normal ranges across all frequencies tested. I have to assume it’s some kind of discrimination or processing difficulty in my brain.

I’ve noticed the same effect can be triggered even in a white environment by only two or three people trying to talk to me at the same time. I can’t understand anything any of them are saying and can’t listen to just one.

I'm the same, and no, others are not pretending. It makes sense that our increased ability to recognize non-speech sounds may come at a cost of reduced ability to recognize speech.

Having worked (and frequented) loud bars and clubs for decades no one can hear anyone and just nods along.

Interesting, I'm the exact same, but so far hadn't come across anyone else with this issue.

I think the two aspects might be related. Possibly the average brain is more finetuned to recognize speech specifically, which comes at the cost of recognizing other sounds, but improves speech recognition. Ours are less finetuned, with the opposite effect.

I also have a problem with "background noise" and being unable to understand what people are saying in noisy environments.

Most people definitely do not have it as badly as I do, or they'd never go to a noisy bar and try to talk. It's simply impossible for me to do anything but pay full attention to the person talking, and even then I often have to guess many of the words.

I even went and got my hearing checked (and my wife did at the same time), but the clerk assured me that we don't definitely have hearing problems and joked that we needed marriage counseling instead. :/ It's funny now, but I was a little pissed at the time.

Anyhow, my point is that some of us do indeed "hear" worse in noisy environments, even if our ears are amazing when it's quiet.

These have been mentioned elsewhere in the comments but in case it's helpful:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_auditory_attention

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect

> On the way out, I tried to mention the tough acoustics to someone at the restaurant’s front desk. I don’t think he heard me.

It's funny how for some problems the path to the solution is blocked by deadlock

Curious, is that your first pair of phonaks? If not, is the use use of bluetooth + app hurting your soul?

My current pair are about 6 years old, working fine still, thankfully... But in a recent visit to audiologist, they had me test out a newer pair... but they had a single button instead of rocker + button, and bluetooth/app was touted.

I dread the touchscreen phase of HA as a young person with functional fingers (vs elders with dexterity issues) and a preference for physical buttons (a la my 2009 car).

The idea of autoswitching the programs outside limited cases (direct audio input cables and increasingly-rare telecoil situations are the only things I would accept) also doesn't sound great! :)

Second, but first with BT.

Connecting to the app takes forever and frequently fails. It seems to clash with the Android device pairing somehow. It's not great. The only workaround I've found (if restarting the things by opening/closing the battery compartment doesn't work) is to remove the pairing and set them up again.

I also would prefer to set up the programs once and then switch them with physical buttons. I had my audiologist do something like that with my old pair. New audiologist now that doesn't seem as flexible, or maybe it's not possible.

The bad app experience is honestly a reason for me to look at other brands for my next pair.

I'd like to think that a bit of a learning curve is okay for something that's basically an extension of your body, but everything seems to be getting stevejobsified these days. (I'll be driving my 2006 Saab until my mechanic either retires or runs out of spare parts!)

> I also would prefer to set up the programs once and then switch them with physical buttons. [...] The bad app experience is honestly a reason for me to look at other brands for my next pair.

While the latter is probably the preferred approach for dealing with the issue, I'll admit my mind first went to:

If you've got time for a side-project maybe consider reverse engineering the Android app's Bluetooth support... and, you know, "just" re-implement the same thing in some stand alone hardware. :)

There may even already be a project related to your device--I'm aware of multiple health/medical-tech/device related reverse engineering projects that were primarily driven people with programming/hardware experience wanting to avoid crappy vendor apps & have control of very personally relevant devices.

Id say the hearing aids are impressive tech but also not as good as I would have thought them to be. My mother uses phonaks and they constantly give feedback or are scratchy sounds and has to go get the audiologist to adjust them.

Shes older so that might be part of the technical challenge with them but i would have expected better given the huge price tag. Feels a bit like a monopoly running the development but that is merely a hunch.

Those do look good, and in the last 3 years the price has dropped significantly. in the uk those cost about $3k, so not much difference. alas, they are not covered by the health service, only lesser ones.

> I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to not just amplify and filter (even if it's in very clever ways) but to isolate and enhance/reconstruct voices in noisy environments.

I often see AI hopes expressed in this format. I would put it another way:

> I hope the advances in "AI" will make it possible to restore hearing to baseline average human level

Wishful thinking would be to enhance it beyond baseline. It's perfectly reasonable to think AI-advances can help researchers restore hearing in most cases, and reasonably within 10 years or so.