Sound interpretation

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Back before I was diagnosed I was looking at a lot of sites to do with Aspergers(many with contradictory or innacurate information) and I'm sure I read something somewhere about people with Aspergers often having difficulty simultaneiously interpreting multiple different sounds(Two conversations going on in a room at once, etc). Is this a genuine symptom? I have a lot of trouble with hearing things, and plan to get my hearing checked soon, but It being a problem with interpretation rather than simple deafness would seem to make a lot more sense given the sintations in which I suffer it, given I can be in the opposite end of the house from a pair of people and understand their conversation with perfect clarity, and yet sitting at dinner whith my family I often have no idea what they are saying.

Auditory processing disorders such as what you seem to be describing, as well as other sensory integration issues, are very common, although far from universal, in autistic people. Some of us lucky ones have agnosias, hypo- and hypersensitivities, and other integration issues on all five senses, plus synaesthesia; others have no unusual sensory processing at all.

I have auditory processing similar to what you describe - I can hear even faint sounds and high pitches well above the normal range for my age, according to a baseline hearing test. However, multiple concurrent sounds blend together, and I cannot (for example) discern one conversation when another is occurring anywhere nearby.

Sensory integration problems may, of course, occur without autism.

Yup, I have that problem, too. Even after years of wearing headphones all day with music blasting, I can still hear small, high pitched noises that others around me often cannot. Put me in a roomful of people all chatting at once, or a place with lots of concurrent thumping, clattering industrial noise and I might as well be stone deaf - the racket is so overwhelming I can't even lip-read to try to follow whats being said.

Of course, by then I'm feeling the onset of an anxiety attack and looking for an excuse to leave anyway, so what's being said no longer matters very much.

Thanks, that fits whats I was thinking about.

I can overhear conversations all the way in the kitchen. Not my intention, though. When I listen to music, I can also even hear the singer like take a breath, you know.