Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a similar problem with distinguishing speech from background noise - makes pubs / clubs / places with background music a nightmare for having conversations (and hence I tend towards the solitary these days since people tend towards those places for meeting.)
This happens to me as well. I've wondered for years if there is actually something wrong, or if I'm somehow just worse than most people at picking one stream of words from high background noise environments. FWIW, my hearing is excellent, and I have a headphone hobby. I definitely notice small details in music. I almost always wear earplugs at clubs / loud environments, and in general loud sounds seem to bother me a…
Oh, my hearing is definitely not excellent after many years of gigs/clubs without earplugs. It's not bad - I can hear a ticking clock from many rooms away if I'm trying to sleep - I just think it's been confused and now doesn't really cope with extracting human speech frequencies from the melange of a noisy environment.
If that makes sense.