I can't even reliably pick out one voice in a largely empty room if there's other sources of noise (ie music playing in a pub, etc.) It makes things like meetups impossible and working in an open plan office a nightmare.

I started to ask people if they could actually hear or understand while with them at a loud place and many told me they couldn’t - they were mostly pretending to understand after eventually giving up.

I have something similar - normal conversations are OK, but in loud environment it becomes very hard. Its not great to be the only one in group who doesn't understand what others are saying. I blew my hearing probably in front rows on metal concerts.

Frustratingly, I've done those online hearing tests which test your ability to hear human voices amidst background noise and they tell me I have no hearing loss.

However, my hearing cuts out around 9khz, which is low. Definitely not my listening equipment because my wife can hear >9khz just fine on the same gear.

When that happens, I totally know what you mean about being unable to hear conversations in restaurants, bars, etc.

Even when my talking partner is aware, localising their voice from the din with one ear is really difficult. (Btw, there's some really impressive research at using AI techniques to help with that, which will makes it way into hearing aids eventually.)

Its at times like that I find it's way too easy to maintain a conversation with nods and yes/nos without having a clue what it's about. I've even done it in languages where I don't understand a word. I feel it says something about the speaker, that they can talk for ages without any confirmation that it's understood and no meaningful talk the other way :)