Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Properly-installed loop systems can help hard of hearing people hear and understand speech dramatically better in meetings, churches and other public venues. Here in the United States, audiologist Juliette Sterkens has been working hard to increase the awareness of people with hearing loss to the benefits of loop systems.

She has just released a short “You Tube” video showing the enormous increase in understanding speech you can experience when you use your hearing aids in t-coil mode in a looped church as compared to not using the loop system. To watch/listen to this video, click here.

You can learn much more about loop systems and how they can help you hear better—whether at church or at home watching your TV—by clicking on “Looping Information“.

As a public service to help you find and experience the benefits of loop systems in public venues, the Center for Hearing Loss Help is now maintaining a listing of churches and public buildings by state. To find a looped venue near you, simply click on “Looped Public Buildings by State in the USA“.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained,

While I was at my audiologist’s office, I mentioned how difficult it is for me to hear in the ‘cubicle farm’ where my desk is, and in some of the conference rooms where I work as a number of my co-workers speak softly. I mentioned how some people I know use FM systems and inquired about whether that would be something I should look into. The tech said they cost $2,100.00! How can anyone afford them on top of the high price of hearing aids?

First off, you were told a half truth. Yes, if you purchase the hearing aid manufacturer’s integrated

proprietary FM system, you will pay a fortune. The transmitter units are small and the FM receivers are built into your hearing aids. But the downside is that because they are built-in and are proprietary, in 5 years when you get your next set of hearing aids, you either have to stay with the same brand of hearing aids, or lose all your investment in your FM system. This is smart marketing on the part of the hearing aid manufacturers, but is ripping off hard of hearing people.

In contrast, you can get a wonderful FM system that will work with any brand, make or style of hearing aids as long as the hearing aids have t-coils—and this system will only cost you about 25% of the cost of the proprietary system, yet work every bit as well.

Furthermore, the good news is that when you change your hearing aids in the future, you can still use this same FM system with your new hearing aids no matter what the brand, make or style. And even better news is that this FM system will work just fine for you even when you are not wearing your hearing aids—for example, if your hearing aids break and need to be sent back for repairs, you still have your FM system with which to hear.

Don’t listen to any hearing aid dealer’s hype without investigating what else is out there if you want to get the best deal for yourself. You can see a great FM system that will work with all t-coil equipped hearing aids for $685.00. To use such an FM system with your hearing aids, you’ll also need a neckloop such as the one shown here for $47.95.

If you get the above system, you will have a great FM system that will work as well as, or better than, the high-priced hearing aid manufacturer’s proprietary system, only costs 25% of the price, doubles as a PockeTalker (personal amplifier), works with any t-coil-equipped hearing aids (or without any hearing aids at all), and lasts forever (well, for a long time—mine is over 10 years old and still going strong). The only downside to this wonderful FM system is that it is somewhat bigger than the fancy integrated hearing aid’s FM system.

Another thing I like about the above stand-alone FM system is that the microphone is separate from the body of the FM transmitter—unlike the one from the hearing aid manufacturer. You gain two advantages from this. First, you can clip the microphone closer to the speaker’s mouth than you can with a system that hangs around their necks, or sits on the lectern. This gives you better quality sound and picks up less background noise.

Second, when a speaker wears the hearing aid manufacturer’s FM transmitter around her neck, it brushes against her clothes, jewelry, name tag, etc. as she moves and creates annoying noise. One lady explained that when the speaker wore her hearing aid’s FM transmitter, “The FM swished across his name tag making a whoosh whoosh noise as he walked”. You don’t have this problem when a lapel microphone is used with a stand-alone FM system.

You can get even cheaper FM systems than the one I mentioned above if you have a stationary application. For example, say you want to send the output of your TV to your hearing aids via FM. Then you could get a nice FM system for under $200.00—less than 10% of the hearing aid manufacturer’s fancy integrated FM system you were quoted.

If you are interested, you can see this transportable deluxe FM system here.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

From time to time scientists have raised the question of cell (mobile) phone safety and how it may affect our brains since the antennas of cell phones are transmitting electromagnetic energy into our heads.

In the past there have been concerns that cell phone usage may cause various kinds of brain cancers. Now new concerns are being raised concerning whether the electromagnetic radiation from cell phones might also affect our hearing. In fact, just such a paper was presented at the 2010 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) annual meeting and Oto Expo September 26-29 in Boston, MA. (1)

Researchers studied 125 people who were long-term (more than one year) cell phone users and 58 controls who had never used cell phones. The purpose of this study was to assess and compare potential changes in hearing function both in the inner ear, and in the central auditory pathways in the brain due to chronic exposure to electromagnetic waves from using cell phones.

Everyone in the study underwent a battery of audiological tests including “pure tone audiometry (250-12 kHz), tympanometry, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE), auditory brain responses (ABR), and middle latency responses (MLRs).”

The results of this study showed that people that had regularly used cell (mobile) phones for more than 3 years were at “a significantly higher risk of having DPOAEs absent as compared with controls. They were found to have higher speech frequency thresholds and lower MLR wave and Na and Pa amplitudes.” (1) In plain English, this means that cell phone users had more hearing loss than non-cell phone users. Interestingly enough, the hearing loss was the same in both ears, not just the ear to which the phone was normally held.

They concluded that long-term and intensive mobile phone use may “damage the cochlea and the auditory cortex”.

What does this mean to you? Just this—land-line (corded) phones are obviously safer—both to your health and to your hearing than cell phones.

If you are going to use a cell phone, keeping it as far away from your head as is reasonably possible would be a wise move. In other words, as much as possible, rather than holding the cell phone up to your ear, do texting, use the speaker-phone function, use a bluetooth headset or use an amplified neckloop or T-links. Using any of these methods/devices will keep your phone at some distance from your head. As a result, your phone will not be unnecessarily zapping your brain with excessive electromagnetic radiation and thus possibly causing you even more hearing loss.

If you have to hold your cell phone up to your head, keep your calls short. However, to be as safe as possible, whenever you are around a corded landline phone, use it in preference to your cell phone. (Although this study didn’t look at cordless landline phones, since they also produce electromagnetic radiation right at your head level, you might be wise to limit your use of these phones too—until long-term studies prove whether they are safe or not.)

(1) Panda, Naresh, et al. 2010. Auditory Changes in Mobile Users Is Evidence Forthcoming? Article presented at the 2010 AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting; September 26-29, 2010; Boston, Massachusetts.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

ClearSounds has come up with a nifty idea—a dual alarm clock/bed shaker combination. They’ve got all the bases covered—audible alert, visual alert and tactile alert. You can have any combination of these alerts on at the same time.

They also have a unique feature—dual bed shakers that work with separate alarm settings. Thus, for example, if you have to get up at 5:30, you can set your bed shaker to go off at that time (your bed shaker is under your pillow or the mattress on your side of the bed). You can leave the audible and visual alerts off so you don’t wake up your spouse. Then, say your spouse has to get up at 6:45, she can set her alarm to go off via the bed shaker and/or the audible/visual alerts.

If your spouse has normal hearing, she doesn’t want to have a heart attack every time the alarm goes off at 87 dB like you might need. Not a problem. She can have the alarm set to a three stage audible alert. When it initially goes off it is a soft intermittent sound. If she doesn’t respond in 20 seconds or so, then it produces a louder sound at more frequent intervals. If that doesn’t work then it goes off full volume with a “medley of sounds”. Cool feature.

Furthermore, this clock utilizes the new 520 Hz square wave technology. 520 Hz square wave sounds are needed by most hard of hearing people since they typically can’t hear higher-frequency sounds well. Studies have proven that 520 Hz square wave sounds wake up just about anyone that still has any hearing.

This alarm clock also hooks up to your telephone so if your phone rings it will shake your bed to alert you.

There are lots of other features you can read about here.

After putting one of these alarm clocks through its paces, I can only see one down side. There is no battery backup. If the power should fail for even a few seconds while you are sleeping, your clock will lose all its alarm settings so it won’t wake you up on time. If you have stable power this normally won’t be a problem, but if your power tends to flicker, you might want to plug this clock into a UPS (universal power supply) available at any computer store to keep it running whenever the power fails.

If you would like to get one of these snazzy alarm clocks for yourself, click on the above link.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady asked,

I have my high-speed internet connection (router) in one room, but I want to use my CapTel 800i phone in another room. Is there an easy way to do this without stringing an Ethernet line to that room?

You betcha! One way is to get a power line Ethernet adapter kit. Essentially, this provides you with a high-speed Ethernet connection anywhere in your house via your existing power lines.

The Ethernet adapter kit comes with two adapters. You plug one adapter into an electrical wall outlet near your router. Then you plug the Ethernet cable provided into the Ethernet adapter and plug the other end to an Ethernet jack on your router.

You plug the second Ethernet adapter into an electrical wall outlet in the room where you want your CapTel 800i located. Then you plug your CapTel phone’s Ethernet cable into the adapter. That’s basically all there is to it. Easy, huh? (Thanks to Lauren Cramer of Hamilton Relay for this nifty idea.)

Note: It is better to plug the adapters directly into wall outlets rather than into power bars or power strips.

Power line Ethernet adapters are readily available from stores such as Radio Shack, Wal-Mart, etc., or on-line from many places including Amazon. To search for one, just type “power line Ethernet adapter” into Google’s search box and you will find a number of sources for them.

These adapters come in different prices based on their speed. An adapter that runs at 85 Mbps (perfectly adequate for running the CapTel 800i) costs in the neighborhood of $70.00. If you want an even faster Ethernet connection, expect to pay around $115.00 for a 200 Mbps adapter kit. (I purchased a 200 Mbps NETGEAR Ethernet adapter from Staples for $120.00 for my second CapTel 800i phone that is not near my router, and it works great with this adapter.)

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

For those of you that use the wonderful CapTel 800i captioned phone, this phone comes with the default volume set in the middle. This means that you can set the volume to whatever level you like, but when you hang up the phone it automatically resets the volume to this preset level. If you are like me and need more volume, it can be aggravating each time the phone rings to have to press the volume button several times to crank up the volume, and in the process miss the first words your caller says.

Unfortunately, there is no control on the phone that allows you to change this default volume setting. However, all is not lost. Just phone your CapTel customer service representative and they can do this for you. (Press the blue button near the top right side of your phone to automatically dial the customer service number.)

Set your phone to the volume you like, and the customer service representative will change the default setting. Now, whenever you hang up your phone it will stay at whatever volume you were last using. The result is that now you will be able to change the default volume setting at will. I love it.

Another thing of which you should be aware. From time to time the CapTel people change/improve/fix the software that runs the CapTel system. Therefore, it is a good idea to update the software in your phone periodically. Probably once every 6 months or so is a good time interval.

Updating your phone’s software is easy. Leave your phone on the hook. Just press the “Yes” key, then select “Phone Settings” (since it is at the bottom of the screen, the easy way to get there is to press the “Up Arrow” key once [or you could press the "Down Arrow" key 6 times instead if your fingers want more exercise]. Then select “Update Phone”. (Again the easy way is to press the “Up Arrow” key once to select it.) Then press the “Yes” key twice and your phone will either tell you its software is up to date, or it will automatically download new software into your phone.

The end result is that your phone will work better or have some new functionality. Cool!

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained,

I have a new Vizio flat screen TV, but it doesn’t have any audio output jacks, nor even an earphone jack. It only has an ‘optical’ output called SPDIF, whatever that is. I don’t have a cable box, satellite box or anything with audio out jacks—just the cable from the wall to my TV. So how do I connect my loop amplifier that uses RCA plugs to my new TV?

The TV manufacturers are changing their familiar analog audio output jacks to digital outs at the behest of the entertainment industry to try to cut down on illegal copying of their music (copyright issues).

In case you are interested, SPDIF is the new Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format (more commonly known as Sony Philips Digital Interface). SPDIF is usually implemented in consumer products as TOSLINK, an output connector from which the digital signal is emitted into an optical fiber cable.

What this means is that we hard of hearing people are up a creek without a paddle when it comes to connecting our loop amplifiers to our new TVs.

You see, at the present time, loop amplifiers such as the Univox DLS-50 do not accept digital inputs, thus you need to have a device that either puts out analog audio (uses RCA jacks), or you will need to get a digital (optical) to analog converter such as the Gefen TV Digital Audio to Analog Adapter (Part No: GTV-DIGAUD-2-AAUD).

The cheapest source I can find on the Internet is NextWarehouse.com. They have it for a delivered price of $57.15 (free shipping and no tax).

You’ll also need to get a digital cable to connect your TV to this gizmo box. Then you plug your loop amplifier RCA cables into the RCA jacks on this adapter and voila—analog sound for your loop amplifier. It’s that easy.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D., with Steve Barber

You want to be careful to match mono plugs to mono jacks and stereo plugs to stereo jacks when using music equipment. If you don’t, you can end up with problems. My friend Steve explained,

I’d been happily using my neckloop (a standard Williams neckloop) with my iPod Touch for nearly a year. Mostly I used it for listening to talk radio podcasts, so the fact that the neckloop had a mono plug that I was inserting into a stereo jack didn’t bother me at all. I could understand speech pretty well, as long as there wasn’t a lot of music or cackling banter behind the speech.

As my hearing continued to improve over the last couple of years with my cochlear implant (CI), I’ve started listening to music. It’s not always like I remember it, but I’ve found if I select my songs carefully after previewing them from the iTunes store, some of them are actually enjoyable.

I recently learned one thing that’s improved my enjoyment of some songs. One such song is Ray Charles “What’d I say”. It has a great instrumental lead in with good beat that sounds pretty normal. However, when he started singing, he sounded like he was far away. I immediately realized that my neckloop’s mono plug was only receiving one stereo channel, and he had recorded the vocal on the other stereo channel. Thus, I could only hear it “distantly”. [This recording is a particularly good example of extreme separation between both stereo channels—with the music almost exclusively on one channel and the voice almost exclusively on the other. Normally you get a better mix of voice and music on each channel so it is not as noticeable.]

I rushed out to Radio Shack, and bought a 3.5 mm stereo male to 3.5 mm mono female adaptor (part number 274-374) for less than $3.00, and voila, Ray is out of the barrel! It sure makes a big difference on that song!

If you are listening to a stereo device, you should never plug in a mono neckloop, earbud or headphone. Instead, do what Steve did, and get the proper adapter from Radio Shack. That way you will be able to hear the sounds from both stereo channels via your mono neckloop. Also, and this is important, you will not short out the other stereo channel as you do when you plug a mono device into a stereo jack. Doing so can damage your musical device.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained,

I have total loss of hearing in my right ear (treated acoustic neuroma) and moderate hearing loss in my left ear. I wear a BTE hearing aid in my left ear. Can you come up with some type of system that would enable me to hear my wife’s soft voice without constantly asking her to repeat herself when we are out together in the car.

I understand your situation. I can’t hear my wife in the car either. Since you are deaf in your right ear, your left ear has to do all the work. This results in two problems when you are driving. The first problem is what we call the “head shadow” effect. This is where your head effectively blocks most of the sound from your wife as it has to travel around your head to reach your opposite ear. Second, since your left hearing aid is beside the window, it picks up traffic and road noise better than your wife’s voice, which further exacerbates the situation.

Fortunately, there is a easy, and relatively cheap, solution to your problem. It works great for me, and should work great for you too. Here’s what I do.

I use a PockeTalker, lapel microphone. and either a neckloop or earbuds. The PockeTalker is a small portable personal amplifier. I normally put it in the cup holder between the front seats. To use it, I unplug the microphone that comes with the PockeTalker, and plug in the semi-directional lapel microphone I love. This microphone comes with an alligator clip that my wife clips to her collar or clothes close to her mouth.

To hear via the PockeTalker, I have two choices, depending whether I choose to wear my hearing aids or not. If I choose to wear my hearing aids, I plug a neckloop into the earphone jack on the PockeTalker, put it around my neck, switch my hearing aids to their T-coil mode and hear her voice loud and clear that way.

If I choose not to wear my hearing aids, I just plug the PockeTalker’s ear buds into the earphone jack instead of the neckloop, turn it on and adjust the volume for my wife’s voice. Now I can hear almost everything she says with little trouble. Both ways work great.

The same system also works great in noisy restaurants, or anywhere you and your wife are seated either beside each other, or across from each other.

Besides hearing my wife loud and clear, the good news is that this system doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg either!

Here is the link to the PockeTalker and accessories page. The PockeTalker is shown at the top of the page. The neckloop I recommend (NKL 001) is the 8th picture down, and directly below it is the Lapel microphone (MIC 054).

This is all you need for your application. Try it and see if you don’t love this solution as much as I do.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained:

I am looking at a loop system for my home to be used with the telecoils in my hearing aids. I want to use it primarily to help me converse when a lot of people are in the house. I am looking at the Univox line and I have a couple of questions.

1. How many microphones (I like the Radio Shack wireless/patch cord option) are the systems limited to?

2. Will it work effectively with a room microphone?

The Univox line of loop amplifiers are great amplifiers. That is why I carry them. I have looped one end of my house using the DLS-50 Univox loop amplifier, and am very pleased with the results.

Now to answer your questions.

1. The Univox DLS-50 has three ports (jacks) on the back, so you could plug in up to 3 microphones at a time—but I’ve never tried using that many microphones in that way.

A better way, if you want to use multiple microphones, would be to get yourself a small mixer and plug all your microphones into the mixer, set the levels so all their outputs are about the same, and plug the output of the mixer into the loop amplifier. That way you are not limited by the number of microphones you have. At the same time, you have also leveled out the differences in volume between the people using the various microphones.

2. The loop amplifier itself will work great—but one room microphone is going to pick up all of the noise and babble in the room, so you are probably not going to be able to effectively hear any given person. With our poor ears, typically we need a microphone right at the speaker’s lips, not a general one in the room picking up all the other sounds. You’d have to experiment to see if a room microphone would work for you in the situation you describe, but I know it won’t work for my ears. If only one person is talking at a time, and he is quite close to the microphone, and there isn’t any background noise, then a room microphone could work quite well—but this is not the situation you are envisioning. It would be much better to have multiple microphones—one clipped to each person’s collar.

You can learn the specifics of the various Univox loop amplifiers here.