Sub question if anyone is interested. I often have to ask people to repeat themselves but when I go get hearing tests they say I'm perfect. It's a little annoying. I've copped it out to this framework: the hearing tests only tests the range of the human voice, but it doesn't test say, understanding through other systems. For example, I cannot for the life of me understand anything my nieces or nephews say over the phone. Speech practice aside I believe that given that their voices are high pitched, I'm assuming the phone lines (and online meeting rooms) collapse the human voice to a smaller wavespace for efficiency, hense forth clipping the highs and the lows making it harder to distinguish the nuances of the sound. I can understand them just fine in person, but over the phone is such a nightmare. I've developed a bit of an ear as you when when you are around a group of people for long enough. (I.E. parents not able to understand customer service folks when they resort to short form, "slang" English, vs standard pronunciation.) Wonder if anybody else has gone down this rabbithole a bit deeper and can share their insights. (All this because I wanted to qualify the "actually interesting" statement....