SoundPrint: Telling those of us with auditory sensitivities where not to go (opens in new tab)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

love that idea.

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.

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

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

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

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.