by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
A lady explained,
I wear two behind-the-ear (BTE) aids. I would like to find a nice headset with a microphone to use on Skype or softphone via my computer. What would you suggest?
Wearing your hearing aids under headphones can be a real pain as they often put too much pressure on your ears and squish your ears between the headphones and hearing aids. It doesn’t take long before this really hurts.
A better solution is to use the t-coils in your hearing aids and a neckloop. The cheapest way would be to plug a passive neckloop into the earphone jack of your computer (Use a stereo to mono adapter since neckloops often have mono plugs. I suggest Radio Shack part no. #274-374) and listen via the t-coils in your hearing aids. To talk, simply plug a compatible microphone into the microphone jack in your computer. If you used a lapel microphone, you’d be handsfree and hear in both ears. Here are the links to the neckloop and lapel microphone I love.
If your computer has bluetooth built in, a more elegant solution is to use a bluetooth neckloop. It has the microphone built into the neckloop. Now you’d be free to move around a bit and be wirelessly connected to your computer (or any other bluetooth device including your cell phone). A bluetooth neckloop costs a bit more than a passive neckloop and microphone though. You can see a great bluetooth neckloop here.
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