‘Tis the season for concerts and music festivals! If you’re a music lover, you don’t want to miss out on the music scene, so we’ve created this expert guide on how to use your hearing aids effectively and safely at concerts and music festivals.
Hearing Challenges at Concerts
Concerts and festivals, especially at outdoor venues and large arenas, present difficulties for people with hearing loss. While smaller indoor venues are engineered for favorable acoustics, an enormous arena or outdoor amphitheater is prone to sound distortion and echo due to the vast amount of open space. You may also notice excessive background noise from the environment and reduced sound quality the further you get from the stage, even in more intimate locations.
Concert Tips for Hearing Aid Users
Wearing your hearing aids can help immensely with the above challenges. Let’s discuss how to use them to their full potential so you can get the most out of the concert experience.
Confirm Accommodations in Advance
Many concert venues—indoor and outdoor, large and small—offer accessibility services. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires all theaters with seating for 50 people to offer accommodations. Call ahead to learn about what is offered. This might include things such as:
- Preferred seating or designated seating areas
- Assistive listening devices (ALDs)
- Loop systems
- Sign language interpretation
Prepare Your Devices
Some music festivals last all day, or even span several days. There’s nothing more disappointing than having your concert experience interrupted by a dead hearing aid battery. Bring backup batteries or a portable charger (depending on whether you use rechargeable devices or replaceable batteries) to ensure this doesn’t happen to you.
Another preparation you could make is creating a custom listening program designed for live music environments. Contact us at Bangor Audiology, and we can help you build one, even tailoring it to the venue you’ll be visiting!
Choose Your Seat Wisely
If you’re attending an event where you book a particular seat, choose a seat location far from speakers or amplifiers. You don’t want to damage your hearing aids or harm your residual hearing with exposure to dangerous sound levels.
Turn the Volume Down
On the same note, you can also mitigate your exposure to dangerous sound levels by turning down the volume on your hearing aids. Thanks to the customized settings within your hearing aids that match your hearing loss needs, this won’t lead to sound distortion, but instead will turn the volume down on all pitches evenly.
Bear in mind, however, that forceful sound waves can be strong enough to cause damage to the microphone and internal components of your hearing aids. You haven’t decreased that risk just because you’ve turned the volume down on what reaches your ears.
Enjoy the Immersive, Whole-Body Experience
Don’t just take your cues from the music itself; concerts have a lot going on, from the musicians’ movements, the vibrations from the bass and drums, stage lighting and other stage effects. You can enhance your experience beyond just sound by feeling the energy of the whole room and exploring other visual and tactile ways to engage with the show.
Enjoy the Show!
If you need to create a custom listening program or give your hearing aids a tune-up before the show, give us at Bangor Audiology a call to set up an appointment. We want you to enjoy the concert to the fullest, and your hearing aids can help you do just that.