A lady asked,

I was wondering if I can make phone calls using the Music Links? If not, can I listen to music using the T-links. I don’t want to buy both, I just want to buy one. Can you help me with this?

The Music Links are designed as their name implies, to listen to music. With them you can hear in true stereo. They plug into any standard 3.5 mm (1/8″) audio jack.

On the other hand, the T-Links are designed for talking on the phone in place of using another headset. They include a built-in microphone. Thus they have the 2.5 mm (3/32″) plug used for headsets.

Thus, normally you’d have to buy both if you want to listen to music (Music Links) and use the phone (T-links).

However, if you have one of the new smart phones that uses a 4-pin (4-pole) plug (the plug has 3 separators and thus 4 separate metal sections on the plug) AND is the standard audio plug size (3.5 mm or 1/8″) then you are in luck.

What you do is get the Music Links and listen to music the normal way. When you want to use the phone for phone calls you listen via the Music Links (just like you do for music), but you have to speak into the phone’s mouthpiece like you normally would if you weren’t using the Music Links.

This works because on 4-pin (4-pole) phones, when you plug in a 3-pin (3-pole) plug like the music links has, it does not switch into headset mode (which would disconnect the phone’s internal microphone) like it would with a 4-pin plug. As a result, you get the best of both worlds. You can listen to music with your Music Links AND also use your Music Links to listen to the other person while you are making a phone call.

If you do not have a 4-pin phone, you’ll need both the Music Links and the T-links. You can see the Music Links here and below them, the T-Links.

If you have trouble hearing on the phone, there are two basic technologies that can help you. One is to amplify speech so it is loud enough for you to hear it. The other is to convert the speech to text so you can read it. And if you want the best of both worlds, you’d want a phone that could both amplify speech and caption it at the same time.

The good news is that there are such phones. I have two of them on my desk as I write this.

The first company to provide amplified, captioned phones was CapTel. I have had a CapTel phone since they began their first trials a few years ago. Today, CapTel’s state of the art phone is the CapTel 800i, which uses a regular phone line to transmit speech and a high-speed Internet connection to send the captions to the phone’s screen.

My other phone is Sorenson’s new CaptionCall phone. Although both of these phones work about the same, the sleek new CaptionCall phone impressed me at first sight.

Yes, there are things that could be improved, but overall this is a really nice amplified, captioned phone for hard of hearing people.

The competition between these two companies is a good thing for us as hard of hearing users as each company tries to outdo each other in innovation, features, quality and price.

How to Get CaptionCall’s Phone Absolutely Free

Now here’s some wonderful news! Although this phone normally goes for $149.99, sometimes you can find a promotion that will knock $50.00 off the price so you can get it for $99.99, like I paid for my CapTel phone. However, if you act now, CaptionCall has a special promotion so that you can get this phone absolutely free.

Here’s how to get your free phone. Go to http://www.CaptionCall.com. Near the top right corner of your screen, you’ll see three green boxes. Click on the middle one labeled “REQUEST INFO”. Do not click on the “ORDER NOW” button if you want to take advantage of this free offer. In the promotion code box, type in the special promotion code “HS1283”. Fill in the rest of the form and click submit.

If you would rather phone in your order, simply call the toll–free CaptionCall customer support number at 877–557–2227. Be sure to mention promotion code “HS1283” in order to get your free phone.

In due time (and this may be a couple of days or a few weeks depending on where you live and how busy the installers are in your area) a CaptionCall installer will contact you to arrange to come out and install your phone for you. Again, this will not cost you a penny. The CaptionCall installer will show you how to use your phone and explain its many features.

If you want/need a second captioned phone, you can get a second CaptionCall phone for $99.00.

Requirements for Getting CaptionCall’s New Phone

It order to qualify for a free CaptionCall phone, you need to meet the following:

1. You must be hard of hearing yourself, or someone in your household must have a hearing loss.
2. You must live in the United States.
3. As with any other home phone, you need a landline phone connection.
4. You need a power plug near the phone. (Most amplified and captioned phones are powered by house current.)
5. Unlike other phones, this phone needs a high-speed Internet connection. The connection can be a DSL line, or it can be a high-speed cable connection as long as you have a standard Ethernet connection into which you can plug this phone.

Who Pays for the Captioned Calls?

You’ve heard the expression, “There is no such thing as a free lunch” so you may be wondering how companies such as Sorenson and CapTel can offer free captioning services. The reason captioning is free to hard of hearing (and deaf) people is because it is funded by a monthly charge on everyone’s existing landline phone bill and mandated by the Federal Government. You can see it itemized on your landline phone bill as “Telecommunications Relay Service”. According to the government website, “This charge helps to pay for the relay center which transmits and translates calls for hearing-impaired and speech-impaired people.” (So everyone with a landline phone has been funding this service all along, whether they realized it or not.) Therefore, if it will help you, go ahead and use it. That’s what it is there for.

Features and Cautions

A cool thing about the CaptionCall phone is that it is the first phone of which I am aware that actually has Wi-Fi built in. Thus, if you have a wireless router, the CaptionCall phone can connect wirelessly to your router. That way you can use it anywhere in your home without having to have a nearby Ethernet connection.

Note: the CaptionCall phone’s built in wireless antenna does not have the extended range that many routers and laptop computers have. This means that if you locate the CaptionCall phone at some distance from your router (perhaps your router is in the basement) you may have problems getting a good connection. In such cases you will need to use a direct-wired Ethernet connection. However, as long as you are reasonably close to your wireless router, (CaptionCall suggests within 30 feet as a rule of thumb) this phone works wonderfully well in wireless mode. You can tell how strong the wireless signal is by the number of bars shown on the upper right corner of the screen. Four bars indicates you have a strong signal.

The CaptionCall phone stays in captioning mode until you turn off the captioning. Thus, if you captioned your last call, it will automatically caption your next call unless you turn off the captioning in the meantime.

Also, if you have the captioning on and realize that you can hear the person fine, just press the CaptionCall button to turn off the captions (and save the fund some money since all captioned calls are billed to the fund at the rate of $1.76 per minute). By the same token, if you have the captions turned off and you receive a call and have trouble understanding the person, just press the “captioning” button and in about 5 to 10 seconds, your call will begin to be captioned. In other words, you can turn captioning on or off on the fly. You do not have to wait until the call is completed to change captioning modes.

The CaptionCall phone is easy to use and works just like a regular phone. There are no special numbers to dial or special numbers those calling you need to dial. You just pick up the receiver, dial the number like you normally would, and if you want the incoming speech to be captioned, just press the CaptionCall button at the top center of the phone. Within a few seconds anything the other person says will appear on your phone screen.

CaptionCall’s phone has a 7 inch screen. It comes with three text sizes and three contrast settings. Combined with its exceptionally smooth-scrolling text that makes text ever so easy to read. Furthermore, the wonderful screen resolution—800 x 480 pixels—gives beautiful, clear captions. You do not need to strain to read the captions, nor do they look pixilated.

Note: the accuracy of the captions ranges from near perfect to almost useless. If the person to whom you are talking speaks reasonably slowly and clearly, the resulting captions are wonderful. However, if the person speaks fast, doesn’t pause, doesn’t articulate his words clearly or has a strong accent, the captions may be pretty much useless. If this happens, you need to ask the person to repeat what they said slowly and clearly. The quality of the captions should instantly improve.

Another cool feature that CaptionCall built into this phone is how you can customize the phones frequency response to your specific hearing loss. To set it for your kind of loss, just press the “Settings” button, then choose “Amplification”. Now you have 5 choices for your kind of loss. Choose “None” if you have a “flat” curve as shown on your audiogram. If you have the rare reverse slope hearing loss, choose “Boost low frequencies”. If you have a “cookie-bit loss” choose “Boost mid frequencies”. If you have the very common “ski slope loss” then choose “Boost high frequencies”.

Now here’s a really cool feature—if you want to set the phone to exactly match your audiogram, you can choose “Custom”, then you move the green dots on the phone’s audiogram up or down by frequency to match the degree of hearing loss shown on your audiogram. (You just “push” them with your finger on the touch-sensitive screen.)

Another thing that impressed me about the CaptionCall phone is its clarity of sound. At high volumes, other phones I have used process speech so much that the speech sounds clipped and unnatural. Not so with the CaptionCall phone. Furthermore, there is no feedback like can happen with some high-powered phones.

The CaptionCall phone provides 40 dB of gain. This is plenty of volume if your hearing loss ranges down to moderately-severe or so. However, if you have a severe or profound loss and you choose not to use hearing aids when using the phone (which is what I do), you may find this gain is not enough for you. What I do is add an external amplifier between the phone base and handset for an additional 45 dB of gain. My favorite amplifier for this application is Serene Innovations UA-50. (I use it with a binaural Plantronics headset with boom microphone for handsfree operation.)

The CaptionCall phone has an 1/8 inch audio jack on the left side. Normally, an 1/8” (3.5 mm) jack would indicate you could plug in a neck loop or headphones or earbuds. However, CaptionCall goofed and wired this jack, not to fit the above, but to fit loopsets (neckloop and microphone combinations) and headsets (earphone and microphone combinations). Since these devices typically use a 3/32” (2.5 mm) plug, they don’t work either.

However, all is not lost. CaptionCall will furnish an adapter at no charge, or you can get one at Radio Shack, (# 274-0397). Then you will be able to use a loopset such as the Clear Sounds CLA7v2, but not a regular passive neckloop.

All in all, I am very pleased with CaptionCall’s new phone. It is now my favorite phone. Try it. Maybe it will become your favorite phone too. And best of all, the price is right!

A lady explained:

I have hearing aids and a heart pacemaker. I use a cell phone on my opposite ear but I’m having trouble hearing and would like to be able to use a bluetooth neckloop. Since I would be wearing this around my neck, would this affect my pacemaker?

I’m asked this question from time to time. As far as I know, there are no known cases of pacemakers malfunctioning because of the person using any of the various Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) to help them hear better, but there are warnings that it could happen. Since there are no guarantees that it won’t ever happen, you still need to be careful.

From what I’ve read, you should keep any electronic device at least 6 inches away from your pacemaker. Thus, if you were wearing a bluetooth neckloop, I’d keep the “dongle” on the side opposite to your pace maker. You’d have to pin it there or it would just swing back to the center again—well within 6 inches of your pacemaker. That’s one solution.

Another solution is to use the T-links rather than a bluetooth neckloop. The T-links hook over your ears—well away from your pacemaker so they shouldn’t ever be a problem. They plug directly into your phone so you’d have to have your phone on your person—not in your purse like you could do with a bluetooth neckloop. You can see the T-links here.

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“.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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!

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.