I can hear when most TVs are on - actually as I type this I can hear the monitor. It's just a high pitched constant sound like a dog whistle.

Yet when I am in noisy environments I often am much less adept at figuring out what people are saying than others.

Are these two things related?

Probably not. There is a particular kind of hearing problem, where the brain doesn't process the frequency bins that sounds are broken down into very well. It impacts your ability to do source separation and tell the difference between different sources of sound. The symptom of this particular issue is that you can hear just fine when one person is talking, but have trouble in any environment where there are multiple sources of sound, so several people talking at once, background noise etc.

Because people have no problems in the classic quiet room, one person talking sound test environment, it tends to slip through the simple screening tests.

"Because people have no problems in the classic quiet room, one person talking sound test environment, it tends to slip through the simple screening tests."

This is exactly why every time I've had an Audiology test, I've never scored above "Average - Above Average", even though I can hear nearly every fluorescent light ballast, powered-on TV, etc. From my own personal tests that I've done with soundwave generators, I can hear up to about 20khz.

> actually as I type this I can hear the monitor. It's just a high pitched constant sound like a dog whistle.

Curse you for this! I've had this monitor for years without a problem and now I can't unhear it!!

By the way, I have the same exact problems as you do: hypersensitivity to high frequencies, and I can't hear / understand crap in a bar.