Meyer Sound Backs Hearing Health Initiatives

Berkeley, CA (February 20, 2026)—World Hearing Day will take place on March 3, and in recognition of that, Meyer Sound is participating in global standards initiatives, education efforts and partnerships focused on safer listening practices in live sound environments.

Meyer Sound president / CEO John Meyer notes, “Sound is only successful if people can listen to it comfortably and clearly over time. Hearing health is a responsibility that should be built into how sound is designed and experienced.”

Meyer Sound senior acoustic engineer Jessica Borowski is involved in the World Health Organization’s “Make Listening Safe” initiative, which addresses venues and live events. The standard reframes hearing health as a systems-level issue—one shaped by sound system design, venue acoustics, monitoring practices, and education.

For Borowski, that standard marks a shift from isolated personal choices to shared responsibility: “For many years, hearing health in live sound relied almost entirely on individual behavior, while the WHO framework acknowledges that safe listening is influenced by the entire environment—how systems are designed, how sound is distributed in a space, and how informed the people working in those environments are.”

HELA-GOOD EDUCATION

Meyer Sound is a founding member of the HELA initiative (Healthy Ears, Limited Annoyance), a certification and training program developed by an international group of audio professionals, researchers, and educators and hosted by the University of Derby in the U.K.

HELA translates WHO-informed research into practical guidance for engineers, venue operators, and event staff, addressing both hearing health and community noise impact. Meyer Sound has HELA-certified staff in both the United States and Europe.

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Meyer Sound has also been a long-time supporter of CEID (Center for Early Intervention on Deafness) in Berkeley, California, a specialized center providing early education, audiology, and therapy for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. The partnership reflects shared goals around prevention, early intervention, and long-term hearing health.

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“Once these conversations start happening across different forums—standards bodies, training programs, industry events—hearing health stops feeling like an exception,” Borowski says. “That normalization is what makes real change possible.”