When I write about acoustics, I am talking about the qualities that determine how a room or other enclosed space reflects soundwaves. “Good acoustics” means that the space is reflecting sound waves in away that allows distinct hearing. By contrast, “poor acoustics” means that soundwaves are bouncing around in a way that distort or degrade what is heard.

The science of acoustics is much larger than this simple definition. For instance, Wikipedia says that “acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound.

A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology maybe called an acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics is present in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries.

For the sake of this brief article I will limit my comments to how acoustics affect someone wearing hearingaids. The acoustics of a room or other indoor space plays a crucial role in how easily and comfortably you can hear.

Acoustics have a particularly big impact on people with hearing loss, and can make it either possible or impossible to hear what is said. Speech (from a talker’s mouth or loud speaker) travels as sound waves across the room to the listener’s ears.

Some speech reaches the ears directly but some also bounces (reverberates) off the walls, ceiling, floor, and other surfaces of the room before reaching the ears. It is much more difficult to understand speech if it reaches the ears as a reverberation. This creates an overlapping of sound that blends or blurs what you are trying to hear. There have been fantastic leaps in the quality and sophistication of hearing aids over the last decade, especially the last few years.

Many models of hearing aids now offer program settings to filter out background noise. This can make a dramatic improvement to the experience of noise. However, it doesn’t resolve the challenges noise brings. Modern hearing aids can damper or soften background noise but it can’t be completely eliminated.

As I have written before, if someone makes a sales pitch about buying their hearing aids because it will remove all your background noise, that person is either very poorly trained or lying on purpose. I am repeating myself for emphasis… background noise cannot be completely removed! Survey research suggests that background noise remains the biggest problem that people with hearing loss face when seeking to participate in and listen to conversation and discussion.

Reverberation or echo is also a big challenge for hearing aids. They, the aids, pick up any distortion and amplify it, thereby making a bad situation worse. A room or space that is echoy and/or has high levels of noise makes for a difficult, and potentially very uncomfortable, environment for the hearing aid patient. For instance if you watch TV in a paneled room, the sound will reflect off the walls harsher than sheet rock will ample curtains.

I give my patients some very simple suggestions about dealing with poor acoustics in a room, restaurant, or church social hall. If you wear hearing aids, try to get a seat with your back to the wall and keep all the sound in front of you.

I often say, “The very worst seat you can have is in the very center of Cracker Barrel during a busy dinner hour.” I love Cracker Barrel’s food but their hard floors, wood furniture, and walls filled with many metallic antiques makes for horrible conversational acoustics. At home you can soften a room’s acoustics with fabric, curtains, pillows, and even throws or quilts over chairs to absorb sound that could reflect around the room, but in public we have no control over how the acoustics will challenge us. Background noise and poor acoustics remain a difficulty because hearing aids amplify both wanted and unwanted sound. They also amplify any distortion, such as that caused by reverberation. No matter how sophisticated the hearing aid, it will struggle in poor listening conditions.

If you have hearing loss you can hear most of life a great deal better with hearing aids, but I am always very clear about patient expectations. Background noise and poor acoustic environments should be avoided when possible. If you have the symptoms of hearing loss, see a professional who will test and advise you about hearing better.

Jeff Bayliff is owner of Hear the Birds Hearing Aide Center.

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