Save for rare cases, hypoacusis is not a sudden process, but comes on slowly and gradually, determining a kind of habituation preventing it from being consciously recognized.
In the beginning not all sounds disappear, but only a few.

• The need to have sentences repeated
  The hypoacusis patient, i.e. the person who hears less, misses words and phrases because he cannot understand them or confuses them, but also because he is hearing the lower frequency noises (electric household appliances, traffic, etc.) louder, which become annoying.
• Difficulty in interpersonal relations
  If several people are speaking together, if a conversation occurs in traffic or in a car, understanding becomes difficult.
• Errors in understanding speech
  The first sounds not to be heard are the high tones. Words including low tones, such as the vowels AEIOU, and the high frequencies contained especially in consonants, like CSFZ. Therefore if certain consonant letters are not understood it is because they are not heard (high tones).
• Discomfort and stress
  Difficulty in understanding words during a conversation makes participation in social life tiring.
• Difficulty in understanding children
  Children voices are shriller and therefore higher pitched.
• Need to turn up the volume on the TV