If you have hearing loss, then it is often difficult to understand others in noisy situations. Hearing technologies have improved comfort in noise and speech clarity in noise for many difficult listening situations. Church services and fellowship gatherings are complex listening situations that require specific technologies and programming approaches for hearing better with hearing aids.
Reverberation in Churches and meeting spaces
Church spaces and meeting spaces come in many sizes, shapes and ceiling heights. These factors have an impact on sound quality and understanding of speech. When we hear a sound directly from a sound source, the sound quality tends to be very good. Sound reflection off walls, floors and ceilings is called reverberation. Reverberation can sometimes add to the sound quality for music but can also be detrimental to speech understanding. Soft speech sounds tend to be covered up by reverberation.
Most hearing aids have directional microphones. Directional microphones amplify sounds from the front more favourably than sounds from behind and can help you understand speech very well in noise. However, directional microphones do not work well in environments that have much reverberation. There it is important to choose hearing aids that have reverberation algorithms, which work with directional microphones to improve speech clarity in noisy reverberant environments. Also, many hearing aids have multiple programs, so a special program for Church services can be programmed to optimize sound quality and speech clarity. Finally, if your Church has a hearing aid loop system, then specific hearing aids can be prescribed that are compatible with loop systems. If you have concerns about sound quality or speech understanding in Church, discuss these options with your audiologist.
Dr. Peter Russell Au.D. Aud-Reg. and Dekota Clayton M.Sc. Aud-Reg are audiologists and co-owners of Hear Right Canada Nova Scotia Inc. They have locations in Dartmouth, Musquodoboit Harbour and Sheet Harbour. If you have questions, please call (902) 406- 2413 or contact them by email at
