Technology for challenging listening environments
Technology to help you conquer challenging hearing environments
Hot on the heels of our blog about speech-to-text apps, here’s another on remote microphones – another clever way that technology works with your hearing aids to help you hear at your best in demanding settings.
Where do you find it hard to hear?
- Noisy restaurants and cafés: These are unpredictable listening environments that cause many hearing aid users strife. Often low lighting or awkward seating arrangements make it hard to get visual cues. Lots of hard surfaces can also make it difficult to hear who’s saying what.
- In the car: Road noise, few, if any, visual cues (due to seating) and speech directed away from you can all make this setting a tricky listening environment.
- Social distancing: The likelihood is that you’ll be sitting some distance from the speaker, and you’ll have few visual cues if they are wearing a face covering.
- Meetings/large groups: Humans rarely take turns to speak, so understanding who is saying what can be extremely trying when you’re in a meeting or large group. Add to that the absence of visual cues plus some degree of physical distance, and you have a complex hearing scenario.
What can you do about it?
Remote microphone technology has become extremely advanced and can make all the difference to your quality of life, working with your hearing aids to reconnect you to conversations in all the environments above, and more. Below are just a few of the many products now available.
Oticon ConnectClip
This remote microphone turns Oticon hearing aids into a wireless stereo headset, enabling you to make hands-free phone and video calls and stream music into your hearing aids from your smartphone. Hand the ConnectClip to whoever is speaking and you’ll hear their voice directly in your Oticon hearing aids. It can be passed among multiple speakers, put in the centre of a meeting table or clipped onto clothing.
Phonak Roger Select
The Roger Select and Roger Pen from Phonak are sleekly designed, unobtrusive wireless microphones that can be placed in front of a group to connect you to the conversation when used with Phonak hearing aids.
The Roger Select is particularly good for meetings or large gatherings where people are seated. When placed on a desk or table in front of multiple speakers, it will automatically select the person who is talking and will seamlessly switch from one talker to another. When multiple conversations take place, the listener can manually select who to listen to. It can also stream sound from multimedia devices. The Roger Pen works in the same way but is designed more for use ‘on the go’.
Most hearing aid manufacturer’s have their own version of a remote microphone accessory, so even if you do not wear Oticon or Phonak hearing aids you should be able to make use of this technology if you have the compatible hearing aids.
If you’d like to know more about remote microphone technology and to trial it for yourself, call The Hearing Clinic today on 01923 372101 (Radlett) or 01462 506074 (Hitchin) or click on this link below to get in touch
