If you have a hearing problem, it might be something wrong in your ear’s ability to conduct sound or your brain’s ability to translate signals or both depending on your precise symptoms.

Your ability to process sound is determined by a number of variables like general health, age, brain function, and genetics. If you have the aggravating experience of hearing a person’s voice but not processing or understanding what that person is saying you could be experiencing one or more of the following types of hearing loss.

Conductive Hearing Loss

When we tug on our ears, continuously swallow, and say over and over to ourselves with increasing aggravation, “something’s in my ear,” we might be experiencing conductive hearing loss. The ear’s ability to conduct sound to the brain is diminished by problems to the middle and outer ear such as wax buildup, ear infections, eardrum damage, and fluid buildup. Depending on the seriousness of issues going on in your ear, you might be able to make out some people, with louder voices, versus catching partial words from others speaking in normal or lower tones.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Where conductive hearing loss can be caused by outer- and middle-ear issues, Sensorineural hearing loss impacts the inner ear. Sounds to the brain can be stopped if the auditory nerve or the hair like nerves are damaged. Voices may sound slurred or muddy to you, and sounds can come across as either too high or too low. If you can’t differentiate voices from background noise or have a hard time hearing women and children’s voices particularly, then you may be experiencing high-frequency hearing loss.