Did You Hear…?

Take our quiz

1 You’re happily watching your favourite TV show alone when another family member enters the room and grabs the remote. Do they typically: A. Press the pause button while they join you on the sofa and ask what they’ve missed before the show can resume? B. Join you on the sofa, but soon ask if they can turn the volume down a notch? C. Immediately turn the volume right down, shouting above it that the whole street must be able to hear it because the TV’s so loud?

2 You suspect one of your ears is a bit blocked. Do you: A. Ask your pharmacist for advice before tackling the problem? B. Poke about with a cotton bud to clean out the wax yourself? C. You don’t wait for your ears to get blocked – using cotton buds is part of your daily routine?

3 To relieve the monotony of a long journey, you like to listen to the radio when you’re driving. But which of the following most accurately fits your experience? A. You only listen on slower, quieter roads. It’s impossible to hear properly if you’re competing with motorway noise. B. Keep the windows up, and the air-con on, so you can continue to listen on noisier roads. C. You tend to turn the radio right up so you can hear it wherever you’re driving… But you’ve sometimes noticed it’s uncomfortably loud when you finally turn off onto a quieter road.

4 Still thinking about your radio habits, what do you think is riskier: A. Listening to speech radio turned up loud? B. Listening to music or speech radio is equally bad if the volume is too high? C. Music’s far worse than speech radio – all those low bass beats have got to be more harmful?

5 Wearing headphones to listen to music as you walk, you are: A. Still able to hear when someone is talking to you? B. Struggling a bit to hear other sounds? C. Blissfully oblivious to everything going on around you – the whole point is to shut out other noises?