- Think about the people you have trouble hearing the most.
I would bet you that those individuals
have very soft voices.
So in this video I'm gonna show you
how you can hear those soft talkers
a lot better, coming up.
(bright upbeat music)
Hi guys, Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology
and founder of Applied Hearing Solutions
in Phoenix, Arizona, and on this channel
I cover a bunch of hearing related information
to help make you a better informed consumer.
So if you're into that make sure you hit
that Subscribe button.
And don't forget to click the bell
to receive a notification every time I post a new video.
I guarantee that there is someone in your life
whether it's a family member, a friend or a coworker
that you would consider to be a soft talker.
You know, one of those individuals
who never seems to talk loud enough for anybody to hear
let alone someone with hearing loss.
You may have also noticed
that this problem is compounded the further away
that you are from the person that you're talking
to since sound waves lose intensity
the greater the distance that they have to travel.
And to add insult to injury,
wearing face masks like we've seen
during the COVID pandemic,
not only reduce someone's voice
by over half depending on the type of mask that they wear,
but it also makes you lose the visual cues
of that person's mouth,
which makes it much more difficult for you
to fill in the gaps of what you can't hear.
The reason why understanding soft speech
is so difficult is that certain sounds
that we call phonemes become less audible.
Meaning that instead of hearing complete words
you only hear part of the word and it requires you
to fill in the gaps of what you're missing.
In some cases, if you have a hearing loss
and you're speaking to a soft talker at a distance
and they're wearing a mask,
there could be virtually no audible speech information
for you to use.
Traditionally the way that we would address these issues
with hearing aids
is we would either increase overall amplification
for all sounds or increase compression
for soft level sounds.
However, neither one of these options are perfect.
For instance, you wouldn't wanna be walking
around all day with your hearing aids
at an overamplified level
just you can better understand soft talkers,
nor would you wanna go around
and constantly have to be adjusting your own volume
if you happen to run into someone
who doesn't speak loud enough
for you to understand.
Okay, so maybe increasing overall volume is not a good idea,
but what about compression?
Compression is great,
it allows you to increase soft level sounds
at around 50 decibels
to bring those soft speech components
up to an audible level.
But what about all the other sounds
that are in speech that are between 30 and 50 decibels?
Well this is why Phonak today's video sponsor
developed a new feature called Speech Enhancer
that is inside of their Paradise line of devices.
Speech Enhancer was specifically designed by Phonak
to help you better understand soft speech
in quiet situations.
Instead of just increasing overall volume
or increasing compression for soft sounds,
Speech Enhancer was designed
to increase speech by up to 10 decibels
if that speech falls between 30 and 50 decibels
in environments that are relatively quiet,
such as environments that have a signal to noise ratio
of plus 10 or better.
So what does this mean in the real world?
Well basically it means
that if you're talking to someone who's a soft talker,
or you're talking to someone who's at a distance
or talking to someone who's wearing a mask,
you could increase the soft level speech components
of their voice by up to double
if you happen to be in a quiet environment.
This increase in soft speech information
can be the difference between you hearing
and understanding what someone is saying
and you just nodding your head in agreement
even though you had no clue what they just said.
Now one of the things that you may notice
when you're speaking to a soft talker
is that your listening efforts significantly increases
as you strain to hear what they're saying.
Well studies have shown that listening effort
is significantly reduced when Speech Enhancer is activated
even as the distance between the listener
and the speaker increases.
But not only does listening effort go down,
studies have also identified
that speech intelligibility goes up
with Speech Enhancer on as well.
So not only can you hear with less effort,
but you can also understand more of what you hear.
So what about face masks?
Well face masks are a very difficult problem to solve.
Like I mentioned before
not only do they significantly reduce the volume
of the voice of the person who's talking to you,
but they also take away your visual cues.
Since the volume of speech
is reduced so much when someone's wearing a mask,
Speech Enhancer is a great way to increase
those soft level speech components
so you can actually hear them again.
And this is huge because without being able
to see the mouth of the person talking to you,
you have to rely 100% on what you can actually hear.
At the end of the day,
being able to hear and actually understand soft level speech
makes life so much easier,
because you can only pretend to hear what someone is saying
so many times before things just get awkward.
Now if hearing and understanding soft level speech
is something that you've already got figured out
and you're looking for more help in noisy situations,
then make sure you stay tuned for my video
on dynamic noise cancellation
that I will link in the description.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions
leave them in the comment section below.
If you liked the video, please share it
and if you want to see other videos
just like this one go ahead and hit that Subscribe button.
Also feel free to check out my website doctorcliffaud.com.
(bright upbeat music)