Trouble hearing in noisy restaurants? Your neighborhood audiologists at the West Newton Hearing Center offer these practical tips:
- Where you sit can make a difference. The noise level in the middle of any room is twice as loud as the sides or corners. If you wear hearing aids with dual microphones always sit with your back to the noise, facing the wall or corner. If you wear hearing aids with only one microphone or if you do not use hearing aids, sit with your back to the corner or the wall. A corner booth is best.
- Choose restaurants with lots of fabric and better acoustic design. Brick walls, ceramic tiled floors, and hammered tin ceilings are acoustic disaster areas. Look for carpeting, heavy drapes, fabric wall hangings and acoustic ceiling tile instead.
- Dine out early, late or mid-week. Tuesdays tend to be slower nights for most restaurants. If you don’t mind being seated before 6 or after 9 in the evening, you’ll probably have much less noise to deal with. If you must eat out at 7:30 on Saturday night, call ahead and request a quiet table. Most maitre D’s are happy to accommodate you if you mention that someone in your party has a hearing loss.
- Don’t underestimate the advantage your eyes give you. Even if you don’t think you can read lips, you are getting a lot of information from watching when people talk. Sit near a window or other well-lit area to enhance your efforts.
- Choose who you sit next to carefully. Even under the best of circumstances it is unrealistic to expect to hear anyone seated more than a seat or two away from you in a noisy room. So sit next to the person you most want to converse with, or the person with the softest voice.
- Reserve a private room whenever possible. Some restaurants have separate rooms available for parties of eight or more at no additional charge. It’s always worth asking. (Call me and I’ll share my local favorite.)
- Have your hearing tested by an audiologist. Your difficulty understanding speech in noise may be related to a hearing loss. If amplification is warranted, reserve judgment - today’s digital hearing aids are technologically sophisticated enough to help you hear better, even in noisy environments. They are tiny and sleekly designed and no one will notice you’re wearing them (except that you won’t be asking for repetition, mishearing critical pieces of conversation, or driving your spouse crazy from blasting the volume on the TV.)
The audiologists at the West Newton Hearing Center have been helping people hear better since 1984. With the advent of fully digital circuits, dual microphones, adaptive noise reduction, better feedback suppression, blue tooth compatibility and other recent advances in hearing aids technology, it’s never been easier to adjust to amplification. Call us at 617-332-7244 for a free 10-day test drive with the newest hearing aids on the market.
