Hearing-Aid Squeal Grows In Volume As Concert Woe

The concert you've paid $45 to hear has just begun, and exquisite sounds are emerging from the Steinway on the stage.

Listeners all over the auditorium are sinking back in their chairs, wearing blissfully attentive expressions. A tiny snore emerges from somebody's less-enthralled companion, who is enjoying an expensive snooze.

Then you hear it. Eeeeeeeeeeeee. A very high-pitched sound that's just present enough to be heard over the quieter passages in the music. The sound is intermittent; on again, then off again. Just at the point where the music begins to absorb you totally again, there goes the phantom noise: Eeeeeeeeeee.

Where's it coming from? The air-conditioning system? Those overhead microphones recording the concert? Or somewhere off to the left, behind you?

A few heads turn in consternation, looking for the noise. The noise-sensitive may begin to feel that the high-pitched squeal is drilling right through their skulls. By now, the concert presenters are ready to tear their programs in frustration.

It's another hearing aid, turned up just a little too high, emitting feedback that can be heard all the way across a concert hall - but not by the hearing aid's owner. And it's a real problem in Seattle's smaller concert halls, where the noise is more easily heard in an intimate space. It's enough of a problem that at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival's "Piano Spectacular" this summer, festival artistic director Toby Saks made a pre-intermission announcement from the stage, tactfully pleading with the owner and/or adjoining neighbors of the hearing aid to turn it down because the sound was interfering with the live recording in progress.

The plea, incidentally, went unanswered. The hearing aid went on emitting the same intermittent sound (though the sheer volume of the second half, Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" for two pianists, finally wiped out any other ambient noise).

The hearing-aid noise is a growing problem that I've ignored in print for a long time, mainly because I understand how important hearing aids are to those who need them. Some of my nearest and dearest family members rely on them. So do several friends who love music but don't have the hearing acuity they once had.

So, in fact, does the technical director of one of the region's finest acoustical spaces, Meany Theater. John Poulson wears hearing aids - and he also is aware of the increasing audience complaints about hearing-aid noise in concerts.

"Next to back pain, hearing impairment is one of the fastest-growing medical problems," Poulson explains.

"Most people who wear hearing aids have lost the high end of the sound spectrum, which means they can't hear the feedback noise. I'm one of them. My hearing aids can be on my desk, covered by a piece of paper, and people around me will ask where the high-pitched noise is coming from - but it's totally (inaudible) to me.

"The noise is just feedback. If you've ever heard a microphone turned up too high, you've heard the same phenomenon."

As the baby-boomer population moves into middle age, hearing aids will increasingly become a fact of concert life. But many health professionals have even greater fears for many of those under 30, who have been plugged into high-volume headsets since puberty. Rock aficionados who have been attending heavy-metal concerts that deliver sound at paint-peeling volumes also are at risk for developing hearing loss.

"What were human ears designed to hear?" Poulson asks.

"Go to the Methow Valley, and listen. The wind blowing through trees and grass. That's what we were designed to hear."

Instead, today we have heavy machinery, traffic, rock concerts, blaring TVs, airplane noise, car-stereo systems that make the whole street shudder as they drive by. We have a noise level that shortens the ear's hearing spectrum, and shortens the temper as well, as there are more of us packed into increasingly limited spaces.

At an acoustic (unamplified) concert, where you're already listening intently, unwanted sound can be a tremendous problem. The visual equivalent, perhaps, might be sitting in a darkened theater, watching a play or a movie, and having small flashlight beams occasionally directed right into your eyes.

You can shut your eyes - but it's hard to shut your ears.

What's the answer? Most major concert halls and theaters in the Seattle area have hearing-enhancement systems, where a headset that picks up infrared sound may be borrowed for the duration of the performance. I've tried them in the Opera House, and they deliver wonderful, immediate sound that you can turn up or down as you like. Poulson says they're in widespread use in the big theaters, such as the 5th Avenue, but less so at unamplified concerts (i.e., classical music).

"On a busy night," he says, "I might have two requests for our hearing-enhancement equipment (at Meany)."

No one is quite sure why the headsets aren't more popular at concerts.

Maybe it's because people who attend concerts (as opposed to theater events, in which a staged visual presentation is a more major part of the evening) are more sensitive about hearing impairment. Maybe not enough has been done to publicize the headsets or to make them available.

In any case, hearing impairment shouldn't spell an end to concert-going, any more than visual impairment means you can't go to the art museum anymore. That's why we have eyeglasses, contact lenses - and hearing aids. Music lovers who have a greater hearing impairment still can enjoy concerts by the Seattle Men's Chorus, where Kevin Gallagher interprets the words into sign language.

What to do if you're at a concert and you realize that the person next to you has a noisy hearing aid? Usually, adjusting the hearing aids slightly will correct the squealing noise, but the wearer first has to know that the noise is being emitted.

Poulson suggests a tactful mention from those seated beside the wearer, at the first break in the music, that a noise may be coming from the hearing aid. Usually, people are happy to correct the situation and unlikely to take offense - though it's always possible that someone might be offended.

It's a tough call; a tough situation. Clearly, good sense is needed; Boston violinist Arturo Delmoni recently attended a concert that was being recorded live, with a pre-concert announcement that asked listeners to turn their hearing aids off, rousing some to rightful wrath.

Seattle Opera's Speight Jenkins, who was a music critic in New York before becoming general director of the opera, remembers a concert at Carnegie Hall when conductor Erich Leinsdorf walked off the stage, refusing to conduct because of a particularly loud hearing-aid noise in a particularly quiet piece. (Jenkins says the noise "hasn't been an issue in the Opera House as far as I know - knock on wood.")

And while we are on the subject, it's not just hearing aids that emit noise. Delmoni says musicians can seldom hear the hearing-aid squeal from the stage - but they do hear the hateful chorus of beeps from unsilenced watches around the audience as the top of each hour approaches. And then there are the pagers; the whisperers, who chat during the concert; the rustlers, who take five minutes to dismantle a noisy candy wrapper; the phone-a-holics, who forgot to turn off those ringing telephones. Sometimes, the most hotly desired commodity at a concert is the sound of silence.