Speech-in-Noise Simulator

It lets you experience what conversations sound like with different levels of hearing loss. We layer background noise over speech and filter the audio to mimic how hearing loss affects your ability to understand words — especially in noisy environments.

This is a simplified simulation to build empathy and understanding. Real hearing loss varies widely — it depends on the type, frequencies affected, and many other factors. But the core experience of struggling to follow speech in noise? That's very real for millions of people every day.

Because hearing loss costs you signal-to-noise ratio, and there is a number for it. Clinicians measure "SNR loss" — how many extra decibels a voice needs to stand above the background for you to catch half the words. Across nearly 5,600 patients, that averaged 2 dB for normal hearing, 6 dB for mild hearing loss, 11 dB for moderate and 21 dB for severe. So someone with moderate loss needs the speaker roughly 9 dB louder relative to the room than a normal-hearing listener does — in a busy restaurant, that gap simply cannot be closed by concentrating harder. This is also why the effort is exhausting rather than merely annoying: researchers define listening effort as deliberately spending mental resources to overcome obstacles, and those resources run out over an evening.

Quite possibly — and a normal hearing test does not rule it out. Several things can produce exactly this pattern. Standard tests stop at 8,000 Hz, and in one study 74 of 116 adults with clinically normal audiograms had hearing loss above that ceiling, which tracked their reported difficulty in noise. Speech-in-noise ability also declines with age independently of the audiogram, through changes in how finely the ear resolves timing. Researchers are separately investigating a possible cause sometimes called "hidden hearing loss" — damage to the nerve connections rather than the hair cells. There is genuine human evidence that this damage happens, from post-mortem studies showing nerve loss preceding hair cell loss, but no test can currently diagnose it in a living person, and studies disagree on whether it explains speech-in-noise trouble. The practical upshot: your difficulty is real and worth investigating even if a basic test comes back clear. Ask specifically for a speech-in-noise test — see the next question.

Yes, and it is worth asking for by name, because a standard hearing test may not capture it. The QuickSIN takes about a minute, plays sentences against four-talker babble, and reports your result directly as SNR loss in decibels — exactly the number described above. Digits-in-noise tests work similarly using spoken number triplets and take roughly three minutes. If you book a hearing appointment because restaurants are hard, say that specifically and ask whether speech-in-noise testing is included; it often is not by default. Our free hearing test checks the speech frequencies, and the WHO's free hearWHO app is a digits-in-noise screener you can try at home.

Face them so they can see your mouth, and get their attention before you start talking. Cut the background noise you control — turn the TV down, move away from the coffee machine, pick the quieter side of the restaurant. Rather than shouting, which distorts speech and can be uncomfortable, slow down slightly and speak clearly. If something is missed, rephrase it instead of repeating the same words louder — a different word order often lands where volume does not. And be patient about repeats. The core insight: hearing loss is usually about clarity rather than volume, which is why simply being louder so often fails.

Please do! That's exactly why we built it. Share it with family, friends, coworkers — anyone who might not understand what hearing loss actually feels like. The more people who get it, the more supportive the world becomes for the hard of hearing community.