Hard to hear what people are saying over loud music

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This is very much true for me.

I was surprised by this. I've noticed myself filtering out background noises so when I can't hear people over loud music playing it surprises me. I'm not bothered by the house noises that are made at night. It's like they're not even there unless I actively try to ay attention to them. If I never tried to listen I wouldn't even know they exist. When I am talking to someone with the television on I forget all about whatever's playing. I could miss an entire TV show because I'm too busy talking with someone.

Then I get into a concert and the music is booming. I'm in the back of the stadium and I still can't hear what my brother is saying when he is right next to me. The music doesn't feel like a distraction. It's not diverting my attention away from my brother. I'm trying as hard as I can to hear what he is saying but he sounds almost silent. I hear a distorted noise.

It didn't make sense to me that I had trouble filtering out background noises when I do it all the time. I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't filter out noises. I thought some noises were just so loud it's impossible to hear anything over them.

This happens to me all the time. If there's loud music playing I have a hard time hearing anyone. Though soft music like what they play in some restaurants and stores I can hear just fine over. If someone else is talking in the same room as the person I'm trying to listen to though forget it. I just have to tell the person I'm talking to to hang on I can't hear you over so and so. With my family that's the clue to stop talking so I can listen but with the rest of the world not so much. This caused some major problems at my last job where for reasons I have yet to be able to explain I was required to ease drop on every conversation that was going on around me and be able to switch on a dime to chime in if I knew anything that was going on even if it was on the other side of the store. How they did this I will never know because it absolutely amazed me to watch them do it.

If I'm really engrossed in something like a book or my latest knitting project though I go on a sort of autopilot and can block out nearly any sound. Then jump out of my seat the moment someone says my name or the phone rings.

i thought everybody had that. my husbands friends nt daughter, 21, said her and her mates dont enjoy going to bars at night because they are too loud and they cant interact with each other properly.

Music doesn't have to be loud to annoy me. Music of any volume distracts me and makes me very uncomfortable. It's very irritating. If the music is loud, then I feel claustrophobic. The fact that unnecessary noise is there makes me angry. It's like unnecessary information is coming into my head and distracting me when I'm trying to focus on something (talking in this case).

This is true for me too, its hard at motorsport talking to someone when all you can hear is the sound of the karts!

I actually experienced this at Chipotle yesterday. The music and the noise were loud but not too much that it hurt my ears. When I was ordering my food, I had a difficult time hearing what she was saying. She didn’t have much of a problem with hearing me give my order. I actually had to turn my ear toward her mouth like an 80 year old man to understand anything.

I can have problem processing language where there are more than three people talking at the same time. I can catch words or phrases, but coherent understanding is out the window. Two people, I'm fine with. One person I'm fine, but my mind can wander from what is being said. My friends knows this about me, so they are use to me going off on a tangent from the conversation. Two people talking, I say nothing. It is the classic situation where I don't know where to break into the conversation.

As for loud music. It all becomes sound.

Loud noise does make it difficult for people in general to hear each other, but I think ASD often makes it worse.

I noticed a long time ago that I couldn't easily resolve the sound of individual instruments from a record. I'm much more adept at it after decades of experience in recording music. So maybe it's also possible to learn to pick out what they're saying. When I was at the height of my social confidence I had a conversation in a loud music place. It was a matter of sitting fairly close to the ear of the listener, and encouraging the same from them, i.e. treating each other as though we were deaf. I suppose experts might also use a bit of lip-reading, and there's probably some echoing of facial expressions and some hiding of the fact that they didn't hear you. But I never tried the experiment again. I don't much like very loud music or crowds.