How to Hear Your Television Better

One of the first places that my patients report having difficulty with their hearing is while watching television. When I was a kid television certainly is not what it is now. I remember our black and white television with a tiny screen and rabbit ears. My kids would find this concept beyond foreign. My new tablet probably has a bigger screen than our old television. The sound produced by those old sets was also fairly poor even though some of them were built into those massive stereo systems that you might have considered big enough to bury someone in. Today’s televisions are huge with huge pictures connected to massive surround sound system and yet they can still be hard to hear. In actuality they may not be hard to hear but more specifically it may be hard to understand what is being said.

What we know about hearing loss is that for noise exposure as well as the aging process it is the high frequencies that deteriorate on us first. The high frequencies would be what we know as the treble sounds versus bass. With typical hearing loss we loose sharpness before volume. When we watch television with t hearing loss we often try to turn up the volume to help us understand speech better however it is the clarity that we struggle with and turning it louder does not make it any clearer and yet we still try. In reality turning it louder can potentially further distort the sound.

Beyond our hearing ability there are other variables that make television listening more difficult. In the “old days” the television shows we watched were more dialogue based with music and sound effects interspersed on a minimal level. What we watched were shows with people talking. Given the size of the sets we also sat closer to them. In todays world the television shows we watch are like watching action movies in the theater with sound effects constantly where dialogue is embedded in in competing noise making it so much harder to understand. Our television sets are so large that we sit in the back of our rooms to watch television. Our surround sound systems are wonderful for the sound and fury of the television shows but often the systems are not set up correctly to allow for a focus on speech.

Here are some things that can be done to help hear television better. While hearing testing and hearing aids may be the best solution here are a few other things that can be done as well. If you are watching a television set that has built in speakers go into the audio menu and turn up the treble and turn the bass down to create a clearer sound instead of a louder sound, this will be far more useful than volume. The same kind of approach should be taken in adjusting your surround sound system with a priority given to the center channel and the higher frequencies that make speech understandable. It may be a good idea to sit a little closer to your television as when you cut the distance in half you double the volume according to the physics of acoustics. Another great solution is a wireless set of earphones that give you a direct sound from your television without the ambient room noise and which you can control the volume for yourself independent of the others in the room.

As I have said before television is often one of those things that allow us to see the possibility of hearing loss, as we have to directly compare our sound levels with what others prefer. While the strategies I outlined are wonderful ideas to help compensate understanding your hearing needs and your hearing loss should be your starting point.

Running With A Sharp Stick, Exceeding Expectation

I was at a conference the other day where I was able to hear Andy Andrews speak. I had never really heard of this man before and did not know what to expect. When I heard this man resume I felt a little ashamed that I only now was getting to know who he was. Without getting into his amazing qualifications I wanted to get to one of the memorable points he mad during his talk. I have said this before but it might be worth saying again. I am amazed that some of these really smart successful lecturers and authors make a living pointing out what should be obvious to us.

The point that Mr. Andrews made was that when we visit a business we have a predetermined expectation of that business. If we walk into a restaurant that has a reputation of excellence we would expect nothing less than that excellence. The reality is that when we experience a business or clinic etc. that simply meets our expectations we don’t necessarily feel the need to say much more about it to anyone, as it was exactly what we thought we would encounter. We certainly do feel compelled to tell others when we encounter businesses that have poor service or fall well short of our expectation, we might even put a nasty note on Yelp or similar websites to warn others. On the flip side of that we do tell others when a business exceeds our expectations in a significant way. We tell others when we encounter the extraordinary. When a business does the unexpected or treats me in an unexpected way that is positive I want to tell others about my experience. I can think of personal encounters where this was my reaction to exceptionality. I once went on a tour where the tour guide was amazing beyond my expectation more informative than I expected, more personally interactive than I expected and as a result I did something that I do not often feel compelled to do, I gave that company a very positive review on Trip advisor.

We have been talking amongst our staff as of late about this very subject and have been reviewing what we do and how we do it, considering what people expect of our clinic and what we can do to exceed their expectations at every point of contact. It is a world in which so much seems the same from business to business from clinic to clinic. It is sometimes hard to see what makes one place different from another. Andy Andrews went on to say ”to exceed average you have to take extraordinary measures”. “To be different than your competition you have to go in a different direction than your competition in a big way”.  Mr. Andrews went on to say that “having a satisfied customer allows you to stay in business but having an ecstatic customer allows businesses to flourish.

While I have considered what this all means in the context of my business I have also had to consider what this means in my personal life. What do people expect in their interactions with me as a person and do I strive to exceed those expectations. Do people expect a lot of me or do they expect very little?  Am I one of those people that says hey this is the way I am, like it or lump it or am I someone that strives to affect the lives of those I come in contact with in a positive way.

Mr. Andrews made me take a look at my world in a different way than I had before as a matter of fact he proposed that his greatest gift in life was seeing the world differently than others, for example when his mother told him don’t run with that sharp stick as you might poke your eye out, in his mind he was thinking that this outcome was improbable as you might poke it in but probably would not poke it out. Mr. Andrews also told the story of his encounter with his father as a young boy where his father was lecturing him about what Abraham Lincoln was doing at his age proposing that he should strive to achieve such heights. In Andy’s mind he recalls thinking but not being stupid enough to say out loud, “well dad at your age Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States of America (insert smile).

The "Hearable" , The Future is Now.

There is a word that is becoming popular in the hearing industry and it is “hearable”. The hearable refers to the normalization of hearing devices that are accessible and useful to everyone. As an audiologist I am excited as always by new technology but not always sure what the hearing related landscape will look like in the next several years and what our role as Doctors of audiology will be. I have to say though that I am very excited about the new technology that is on our doorstep even today and wanted to share some of the possibilities as well as some of the realities with you.

So how many of you have joined the fit bit craze or any of the other similar devices that allow you to measure hear rate or steps walked etc.? How many of you use an mp3 device like an iPod? How many of you use hands free blue tooth devices for the telephone or an ear thermometer. These are all examples of some of the common devices that we use in everyday life as for leisure or with  other singular purpose. In the hearing world much is changing as we start to understand the potential of the ear for more than just hearing.

The ear is certainly involved in hearing but it is a site that we can use to ascertain body temperature or to monitor our pulse or to sample body chemistry. Some of the research that is being done also uses the ear as a site to place sensors that allow us to monitor brain wave activity. With all of these possibilities the ear can become a part of the body that allows for sensors that can be used to provide information on well being as well as a point of communication. The hearable is a group of devices that tries to use the ear for many or some of these purposes.

In todays world the hearing aid has already taken on some of the technological advances and brought them to the ear. I have been fitting hearing aids that can be linked to an app on you iPhone that allows you to control it and make fine tuning adjustments. You are able walk into a room and adjust the sound of your hearing aid for that room and then save that setting for the next time you are there, this geotag will then be saved and the next time your iPhone locating service sees that you are in that same spot it will ask you if you want to use your previous setting. In the future everyone’s preferences for locations will be uploaded via the “cloud’ and the information analyzed and stored allowing for preferential algorithms to be accessed by the hearing aid user when they walk into that environment.

Todays hearing aids can allow you to speak on you phone hands free with your hearing aids being your phone, they can allow you to listen to your music wirelessly through your hearing aids or to connect to other blue tooth devices or your television.

In the hearable world we have devices that resemble custom made hearing aids that allow you to store and listen to music in your ears as well as to give you information on your heart rate or how many steps you have taken or to use as your hands free phone etc. The hearing aids of the future will be able to monitor your brainwaves in response to the sound input and detect the bits and pieces that might be missing centrally allowing the hearing aid to then react and provide that previously missing information on a fluid basis. The hearing aid in short will be able to tell what you didn’t hear in speech and make sure that you do. Wow!

In the future and even in the present hearing devices can be worn by both the hearing impaired as well as the normal hearing individual with the only difference being which functions are activated in them.

Here in our clinic we are getting ready to bring these technological advances to our patients so keep following us on Facebook or on our website or twitter as we will be launching some really amazing new products that everyone can use to enjoy life more fully. I have normal hearing and cant wait to use these hearables myself. I expect to be amazed.