I can hear sounds well when they are close by, but I can't understand when someone speaks from the next room (I know they're talking, but…). I don't hear the normal doorbell and I can't hear the phone ring when I’m outside but others in my family will.
Felicity: Where my cochlear implant lets me down (if I could say that!) is in distance. It can’t pick up the range of sounds from a distance in the same way a hearing person can. As an example, my husband can hear cows lowing in a paddock a kilometre away but I have to be about 200metres before I can start to pick the sound up. While hearing cows from a distance is hardly important (smile) I use it as an example because there must also be a distance issue with every day sounds which I am not hearing as clearly as a hearing person does. Conversation behind me from another room is more difficult than for a hearing person, because of the distance etc.

Dick: . I can only hear when the source is a few feet away and I’ve unfortunately lost my Bellman system, so I have to sit right up the front at talks etc.
Julio: I do notice my kids can hear softer and more distant sounds than I can, but not that much better. I had put this down to my age, as the kids hear better than my wife (without hearing problems).
Jeff W: I have not noticed not being able to hear things as far away as a normal hearing person normally but of course when using noise programs or lowering the CI sensitivity the distance at which I can hear sounds will decrease dramatically.

Patricia: Distance does have an effect, but not so much as I notice greatly, as in compared to hearing people. One thing I have noticed though is that I am using lip-reading to assist in my understanding of what people are saying, even if I do this unconsciously. Today I visited the dentist. He had a mask on and in speaking to me I couldn’t follow everything he said. I asked him to remove the mask and voila!! I could follow everything he said.

Faye: As for how far away I can hear sounds from a distance, but that’s a hard question. Let me tell you if I am in my front upstairs room (at the front of my house), and someone comes in my front gate, I can hear the click of the gate latch from upstairs and know someone is coming to my front door. When in my office upstairs I can also hear the door bells of my neighbours across the road and that’s with the window shut. So I think that is is a pretty good. Some sounds are easier to hear and identify the direction than others. Distance can be a problem sometimes, just depends on what program I am using at the time to how much or how far I can hear.