Get the hearing aids.You’re right: several voices in one room is the worst: my aids had a setting for restaurants and situations like that--those settings actually work.
One thing you might find (I sure did) is that once you start wearing them (and letting the techs slowly crank them up over a period of weeks), you will begin hearing ’lost’ sounds without them. (I think this is what mahgister is getting at). Part of dealing with hearing loss is re-training your brain to compensate for what your ears are doing. I never wear my aids when listening to music or going to a concert (why would I spend thousands and thousands of dollars on an audio system, or hundreds on a symphony, then listen to it through an amplifier and speakers the size of a small earthworm?). But based on my own advice, I would do well to put them in occasionally and retrain my brain to hear stuff I may have forgotten.
(And YES: please do not f*ck with Covid! we all miss gatherings. If we're on this site, life is clearly not all that bad. We can endure the suffering of not having a family reunion or a Sunday barbeque for a year or so.)
One thing you might find (I sure did) is that once you start wearing them (and letting the techs slowly crank them up over a period of weeks), you will begin hearing ’lost’ sounds without them. (I think this is what mahgister is getting at). Part of dealing with hearing loss is re-training your brain to compensate for what your ears are doing. I never wear my aids when listening to music or going to a concert (why would I spend thousands and thousands of dollars on an audio system, or hundreds on a symphony, then listen to it through an amplifier and speakers the size of a small earthworm?). But based on my own advice, I would do well to put them in occasionally and retrain my brain to hear stuff I may have forgotten.
(And YES: please do not f*ck with Covid! we all miss gatherings. If we're on this site, life is clearly not all that bad. We can endure the suffering of not having a family reunion or a Sunday barbeque for a year or so.)