Question: Every once in a while I hear hard of hearing people talking about “loop systems.” What are loop systems? How can they help hard of hearing people hear better? Are they expensive?—D. B.
Answer: Good questions. Glad you asked them. Loop systems are truly wonderful. They let hard of hearing people hear ever so much better, especially in group settings where they can’t get close to the person speaking.
For some reason, even though loop systems give wonderful sound and are cost effective, they seem to be one of the best-kept secrets around. Few hard of hearing people have even heard of them.
Listen up. I’ll let you in on this nifty secret. Loop systems are a class of Hearing Assistive Technology (HAT)/Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) that work together with hearing aids to help hard of hearing people hear better.
Other classes of ALDs include such things as Personal Amplifiers (PockeTalker), FM systems and infrared systems.
Unlike the above systems, you do not have to wear anything extra in order to connect to, and use, a loop system—no neckloops, wires, silhouettes, receivers or headphones. All you need are your hearing aids equipped with telecoils.
Loop Systems Can Do All This and More
Imagine being able to hear your TV or stereo from anywhere in your house as you move from room to room—and the sound stays exactly the same—sounding as if a person is talking directly into both your ears at the same time. A home loop system can do this for you.
Also, you can hook your home phones into your loop system so you can hear on any phone in the house with both ears, whether the phone is amplified or not. Learn how to hook your home phone into your loop system.
In fact, you can put any signal you want into a loop system. In addition to your phone, that may be your TV, radio, stereo, computer, door bell or whatever produces a sound you want to hear. You can even set up a portable loop system outside on the grass for an outdoor meeting or family gathering.
Did you ever dream of riding in your car and hearing the radio clearly without road noise intruding, or clearly hearing the people in the back seat? This dream can come true if you loop your car (or motor home or boat).
Do you wish you could go to a public meeting or church service and hear the speaker/minister as clearly as if he were talking right into your ears—no matter where you are sitting—without having to hook yourself to some ALD? Loop systems will do this too.
With loop systems you don’t have to fuss around, hooking yourself up with wires, neckloops, silhouettes or headsets to some ALD receiver. Furthermore, there is no extra paraphernalia to lug around, nor do you have to worry about batteries dying at the most inopportune times and not having fresh ones with you.
Furthermore, loop systems will accommodate as many people as can sit/stand inside the loop—all without any extra equipment or cost. Therefore, with loop systems, you never have to worry about there not being enough receivers to go around.
Did you ever get to a meeting late and find all the chairs at the front were taken so you had to sit at the back where you couldn’t hear? If the room is looped, this is not a problem—just switch to your hearing aids to their telecoils and you will be able to hear loud and clear from the very back row.
You can use loop systems almost anywhere. Typically permanent loop systems may be installed in various meeting areas such as public buildings and churches. In Europe, they are now installed in many forms of public transportation—taxis, buses, trains and ships. Small systems can be installed at ticket counters, bank counters, etc. You will also find loop systems in some schools and offices where there are hard of hearing people.
Loop Systems Give Clear Sound
Loop systems provide wonderfully clear sound. This results in dramatically increased comprehension and increased listening pleasure. Loop systems broadcast personalized sound to both of your ears at the same time. Therefore, listening to a good loop system is like having the speaker talking right into both of your ears at the same time.
In case you are wondering, here’s why loop systems produce such clear sound. Speech is made up of various frequencies of sound. Basically, low frequency sounds give speech its volume while high frequency sounds give speech much of its intelligibility.
When you hear all frequencies properly, speech is clear and easy to understand. However, as the distance between the speaker and your ears increases, a number of things happen to degrade this clear speech.
First, as the distance increases, the volume decreases so you can’t hear as well. At the same time, higher frequency sounds attenuate (get softer) with increasing distance and finally disappear altogether, leaving only lower frequency sounds. Without the high frequency sounds, speech is distorted and becomes difficult to understand. Speech is further distorted by reverberation (echoes) in rooms—especially those with high ceilings and/or hard surfaces.
Finally, when there is a significant distance between you and the speaker, sounds around you mix with the speaker’s voice, burying his voice in a jumble of noise.
Loop systems address all these factors. First, sounds no longer get softer the further you are from the speaker. In fact, the volume stays pretty much constant anywhere inside the loop.
Second, since the speaker is speaking into a microphone held about 3 or 4 inches from his mouth, high frequency sounds are not lost in the air. Thus, it sounds like the speaker is speaking right into both your ears.
Third, reverberation is cut to a minimum as the sound of the speaker’s voice goes directly into the microphone rather than bouncing all around the room before reaching your ears.
Finally, since the microphone is so close to the speaker’s lips, little extraneous sound gets into the sound system. Thus, the end result is clear speech.
How good are loop systems? I’m no stranger to loop systems having used them for several years in different situations with good success.
At a recent HLAA meeting, I decided to experiment a bit and find out. The person speaking was using two microphones. One was hooked into the room’s public address system and the other was hooked into my portable loop system.
Using my hearing aids’ microphones, I could hear the speaker fine as far as volume was concerned. However, the clarity of his speech was poor. Distance let the high frequencies fall off and that, coupled with the reverberation and echoes in the room, made understanding him difficult. In fact, I needed to speechread him in order to get his message—and I was sitting in the front row!
When I walked to the back of the room, the reverberation and noise combined with the increased distance made understanding him even more difficult.
In contrast, when I switched my hearing aids to their telecoils, I could hear everything the speaker said loud and clear. It was so clear I didn’t even have to speechread. The difference was dramatic—like night and day—no matter where I stood in the room.
One lady, after reading this article, wrote to a hard of hearing group, “I want to thank Dr. Neil at the Center for Hearing Loss Help for writing directions that were totally comprehensible to this female mind, and taking the time to answer my questions. The successful looping that I did in the basement was evident when I got the Univox 2A [now replaced by the Contacta HLD3] out of the box and plugged it in. Flipped the switch on my aids to M/T and it was like WOW!”—R. C.
Another lady wrote, “Last Thursday I ordered the Univox with pad from Dr. Neil. He had the equipment shipped to California in just two days. It arrived on Saturday. My husband’s 80th birthday was the next day. His son hooked up the Univox with no trouble, and then on Monday, April 17, his hearing aid provider installed the needed t-coil program and voila— it works like a charm. He is hearing TV as he hasn’t done in years!”
A man wrote: “Dear Dr. Neil: This has been the most useful web-site I found on any loop amplification system from any vendor on the entire internet! It was packed with so much details, I couldn’t believe it. I was so excited I even ordered one late Saturday night, and I can’t wait for it to arrive. I found all of the additional information you provided, such as how to make a double loop, or hooking the system up to a FM wireless system (which I have) or hooking it to the telephone, extremely useful. I was so amazed that you even provided specific model numbers from Radio Shack, such as what type of patch cord to use for hooking the amplifier to the wireless FM system or what to buy for using the system in the car. No other site provided such information. You answered every single question I could think of and addressed every issue (such as using a boom microphone for the telephone), it was truly amazing. I just want to personally thank you so much for all the information you provided.”—J. G.
If you are already drooling at the thought of owning your own loop system, order a loop system for yourself now.
How Loop Systems Work
Loop systems consist of three basic parts—a microphone or other input device, a loop amplifier (Learn about the two basic kinds of loop amplifiers.) and a loop of wire. That’s it for the transmitting side. Your own hearing aids equipped with telecoils make up the receiving side.
To set up a loop system, all you do is plug the loop amplifier into a wall socket, plug the input device or microphone into the loop amplifier, string a loop of wire around the perimeter of the room or area you want looped and connect the ends of the wire to the loop amplifier and turn it on. That’s it.
Audio signals are picked up by the microphone or directly from some sound source like your TV or stereo. They are amplified by the loop amplifier and then travel through a loop of wire that surrounds the listening area. The wire loop is used instead of regular loudspeakers.
When the sound signal travels through the loop of wire, it produces a magnetic field in the looped area that mirrors the frequency and intensity characteristics of the original sound signal. At this point, the loop system’s job is done. Now, it is your hearing aids’ job to convert this magnetic signal into sound you can hear.
When you switch your hearing aid from its microphone to its telecoil, all you are doing is connecting a small coil of wire to the input of the hearing aid’s amplifier instead of its microphone. This tiny coil of wire is sensitive to nearby magnetic fields such as the one produced by the loop system.
The changing magnetic field in the room loop induces a corresponding electrical signal into the telecoil. The hearing aid amplifier then amplifies this signal and you hear a faithful reproduction of the original speech signal.
This process of inducing an electrical current in one wire as a result of current flowing in a nearby wire is called induction—hence the term induction loop system—or just “loop system” for short.
Since any electrical current will result in a magnetic field, depending on their location, loop systems may be prone to interference. This interference is usually a buzzing or humming sound. This resulting buzz or hum may be so loud that you can’t use the loop system in certain places. Typically, interference can come from nearby electrical wires, fuse boxes, tube-type TVs and computer monitors and fluorescent light fixtures.
In order to tell if the area you want to loop is free from interference, all you need to do is switch on your telecoils, turn up the volume on your hearing aids and listen. If you hear loud buzzing, that is not a good place for a loop system. As you move around, you will notice that the interference level changes. Set up your loop system where the interference is non-existent or negligible.
Telecoils: The Other Half of the Loop System
The loop wire is the transmitting half of the loop system. The receiving half is the telecoils in your hearing aids. A telecoil is just a tiny coil of wire inside your hearing aid that picks up electromagnetic signals given off by various devices including loop systems and telephone handsets.
Tibbetts telecoils Photo courtesy www.tibbettsindustries.com
There are a variety of names by which people refer to telecoils. They may call them T-coils, T-switches, telecoils, telephone coils or audio coils. It doesn’t matter. All refer to the same thing—a tiny coil of wire in your hearing aid.
In order to use a loop system, you must have hearing aids equipped with telecoils. Unfortunately, a good number of hard of hearing people do not even know whether their hearing aids have telecoils installed or not. Before you buy a hearing aid, you should insist that it have good amplified telecoils installed.
Telecoils got the name “T-switch” from the switch on the analog aids that typically switched between “M” for microphone, and “T” for telephone. Ideally, your hearing aids should have a three position switch (for analog aids) or three programmable modes (for digital aids). These three modes are “M” for microphone only, “T” for telecoil only and “MT” for both microphone and telecoil together.
This combined microphone/telecoil mode is important. Here’s why. When you have your hearing aids in the “T” mode, you can only hear what comes through your telecoils. For example, if you are in a meeting and the person sitting next to you asks you a question, you won’t hear him at all. You’d have to switch your hearing aids back to the “M” setting and have the person repeat the question. In the meantime, you’ll be missing anything coming through the loop system.
With the “MT” position, you’ll be able to hear both through the loop system and people talking around you through your hearing aids’ microphones. This is a nice feature. For example, you may be listening to your TV at home though a loop system. If it is quiet and you have your hearing aids set to the “MT” position, you can listen for the baby crying or the doorbell or phone ringing at the same time you are hearing the TV.
Later, if there is a lot of noise around you (the kids are up making a racket near you), you can switch to the “T” position and cut out all this interference and just hear through the loop system. This way you can have the best of both worlds!
If you cannot get hearing aids equipped with a “MT” function, all is not lost. At home you can work around this by hooking both a microphone and a TV, for example, into your home loop system. The loop system’s microphone will pick up the kids crying, the doorbell ringing or any other sounds around you and superimpose these sounds on top of those from the TV and you will hear both though your hearing aids’ telecoils.
When you buy new hearing aids, if you are smart, you will insist they have telecoils installed. However not all telecoils are created equal. Some are good and some not so good.
Also, you may notice that when using your telecoils, if you tilt your head while listening to a room loop the sound changes in volume. If there is a strong loop signal, this may not matter at all—especially if you have amplified telecoils (telecoils with a tiny amplifier attached). However, if you are sitting where the signal is weaker, you may notice that you hear better with your head held at a certain angle. Experiment a bit—tilt your head at different angles and discover the best angle at which to hold your head for the strongest signal.
In one looped meeting, I noticed that if I held my head up, I could hear well, but whenever I looked down to make some notes, the signal almost faded away. The same thing can happen when using a phone. How you hold a phone up to your telecoils makes a difference in how loud you hear the person talking. The way your telecoils are physically oriented in your hearing aids is important if you are going to get the best use out of them. Learn more about telecoils and why correct orientation is so important.
Setting Up a Loop System
Setting up a portable loop at a meeting or gathering is easy. Just string the loop of wire around the room and tape it down with masking tape or duct tape wherever people may walk so they won’t trip over it. Attach both ends of the loop wire to the loop amplifier. Plug a microphone into the loop amplifier and clip it on the speaker. Turn the amplifier on. Now anything the speaker says will be transmitted through the loop to anyone wearing hearing aids equipped with telecoils.
At home, you can run the wire loop around the edge of a room—stringing it over doorways or you can place it under the edge of a carpet. If you loop your whole house, the easy way to do this is to staple the loop around the edge of the ceiling in the basement. That way you will be able to hear anywhere, both on the main floor and in the basement.
Depending on the power of your loop amplifier, you can loop a room, several rooms or your whole house. That way you can move around in the looped area and still hear what you want to hear. Also, depending on the size of rooms to be loop, you may want to learn how to make a double wire loop.
If you just want to loop your favorite chair (or car seat), setting up a personal loop system is as simple as putting a special loop pad under the cushion of your favorite chair or under the seat of your car and plugging it into the loop amplifier.
Use this chart of wire sizes to determine the correct wire size for the loop amplifier and size of loop you are using.
If you are hooking up a loop system in a church or other public building, here are a couple of signs you can print to indicate that an audio loop system is installed.
Hooking Your Loop Amplifier to Your TV
There are a number of ways you can hook your Contacta HLDE to your TV (or other audio device). Click here to learn how to connect your loop amplifier to your TV.
But I Don’t Have Hearing Aids—Can I Still Use A Loop System?
The good news is yes, you can. If you don’t wear hearing aids, you can purchase a loop receiver and reap the same benefits of beautiful clear sound as do people with t-coils in their hearing aids. Learn more about Loop Receivers.
Adjusting the Univox DLS-50 Power Level
It is important to adjust the power input into the loop pad or room loop correctly so your Univox won’t get too hot. Click here for instructions on setting the power correctly.
Getting a Loop System for Yourself
What does a home loop system cost? The good news is that home loop systems are relatively inexpensive—in the neighborhood of $250.00. Loop systems are especially nice whenever there are two or more hard of hearing people together. With a loop system, each person doesn’t need any extra equipment.
You could accomplish the same thing a loop system does with an FM system for example, but each person would need an FM receiver and a neckloop to connect the receiver to their hearing aids. With more than one person, this quickly gets expensive.
The whole loop system only costs about 1/3 to 1/2 of what a basic FM system would cost for just one person, yet the loop system can handle as many people as you want to pack into the looped area at no extra cost.
There are several loop systems on the market. Some are big systems for large public buildings and others are small systems suitable for home and portable use. One of the best (or perhaps the very best) of these home systems is the Contacta HLD3. This is the system I use and like. You can use the Contacta system in your home using the supplied wall plug. For your car or other vehicle, just plug it into a cigarette lighter socket. Furthermore, you can use the Contacta HLD3 with a wire loop or a loop pad for personal listening (or both). The Contacta HLD3 has several neat features. You can adjust the high-frequency emphasis of the loop to fit your particular hearing needs. Furthermore, you can control the power going into the loop to match any listening situation.
Denise Portis, is thrilled with her Univox 2A [now replaced by the Contacta HLD3]. Read her touching account of hearing again using a room loop. What the Univox loop system has done for her, the Contacta HLD3 loop system may also do for you. Learn more about the many features of the Contacta HLD3 and/or order a loop system for yourself. You do not have to continue to strain to hear. If you’re like me, once you have used a loop system, you’ll never want to go back to hearing with just your hearing aids alone.
Loop Systems Articles Index
Contacta HLD3 Operation and Maintenance Manual
Contacta HLD3 Installation Guide
Chart of recommended wire sizes for the various Univox loop amplifiers
Instructions for setting the loop power level correctly
Two signs you can print indicating that an audio loop system is installed
Learn:
How to make and install a double wire loop
How to connect your TV to your loop system
How to hook your phone into your loop system
About the differences between current and voltage loop amplifiers and why the current one is better
About telecoils and why correct orientation is so important for successfully using loop systems
Question: Can the loop system work with a cellphone? If so, I’m quite tempted to change to T-coil hearing aids..
Question: Is your information, above, up-to-date?
Question: What if I find my TV location makes the buzzing sound you mention. I can’t move it elsewhere.
Thanks.
Karen
Hi Karen:
I’m not sure you really understand loop systems as opposed to a component of a loop such as a neckloop. If you are asking whether you can listen to your cell phone by plugging a neckloop into the earphone jack and use the t-coils in your hearing aids, the answer is typically yes. However, you’ll probably need an amplified neckloop rather than a passive neckloop as cellphones typically do not put out enough power to drive a passive neckloop.
Here is a link to an amplified neckloop that should work with most cell phones.
http://hearinglosshelp.com/shop/clearsounds-cla7-v2-amplified-neckloop/
If you are asking whether you can use your cell phone and plug it into a room loop system, yes you can with a patch cord from the earphone jack on your cell phone to the input jack on the loop amplifier. You could do this for streaming music to your hearing aids, but if you wanted to talk on your phone you’d have to have your mouth near the microphone on the phone as you always do. Using the phone with a room loop means you have to stay within the loop. A much better solution would be to plug an amplified neckloop into the cell phone and listen that way.
And yes, this information is pretty much up to date.
You can test whether your TV location makes a buzzing sound by switching your t-coils to T-coil position. If you don’t have hearing aids with t-coils, as someone with t-coils in their hearing aids to listen for you. First, listen with the TV off. If you hear a loud buzz, then you have problems in your electrical wiring or nearby wiring such as a transformer on a power pole.
If you have a tube type (old style) TV, if you are within 2 or so feet of the picture tube, you will hear a loud buzz. This goes away as soon as you move 3 or 4 or more feet away from the TV. So that shouldn’t be a problem if it occurs.
Cordially,
Neil
Is there anything out there that would help someone with a nerve deafness? I have profound neural sensory hearing loss, with a discrimination of 88 db in the right and 74 db in the left. I’ve tried hearing aids but not at this point they don’t help.
Hi Teresa:
You betcha. Nerve deafness is the common kind of hearing loss that 90% of hard of hearing people have–including you and me. Hearing aids and assistive devices (including loop systems) are what works for most of us. Once the hearing is too bad so hearing aids don’t help, then its time to consider a cochlear implant.
You said your discrimination is 88 dB and 74 dB. If those are your discrimination scores, then they are measured in percentages, not in decibles. The worse your discrimination scores, the harder it is to understand speech no matter how loud and clear it is. That is where assistive devices beat hearing aids.
Exactly what are you trying to hear that hearing aids don’t help you?
What is it that you really want to hear the most? I can help you choose an assistive device that will do the best job., but I need more information.
Cordially,
Neil
Hi,
I have a t coil bi cross hearing aid and I also have a loop system for tv, etc but I just bought a CD player so that I can listen to music again. However the Senngeiser loop system doesn’t appear to work when I plug it into the. CD player. Is it because it’s no technologically compatible? If so is the a make and model of CD player that will work ?
Many thanks.
Hi Liz:
What is the model of your Sennheiser loop system?
To listen to your CD player, all you want is a simple, passive neckloop with a 1/8″ stereo plug at the end. For example here is the one we carry that will work. You want the second one with the stereo, not mono, jack. http://hearinglosshelp.com/shop/neckloop-passive/
These are called neckloops, not loop systems.
Cordially,
Neil
Hello, thank for a interesting article. I have a hearing aid on my right ear and I am deaf in my left ear. Will this device work for me in our motorhome, as I can not hear my husband when he is driving. Please help.
Hi Sandi:
A loop system will work just as well as a hardwired system or an FM system in your motorhome. They just use different technology. The secret to any of these working well is that your husband will need to wear a clip-on microphone so is lips are close to the microphone. That way you will get a clear signal.
The second part of the equation is that you need a t-coil in your hearing aid so that you can pick up the signal from the loop, or neck loop if you plug in neckloop into your FM receiver if you are using an FM system or hardwired system such as a PockeTalker.
I find that I like using the PockeTalker in the car. I clip the microphone to my wife’s collar and I either plug my neck loop into the earphone jack on the PockeTalker if I want to use my hearing aids (and switch them to t-coil mode), or I dispense with my hearing aids and just plug earbuds into the PockeTalker because in my case I can hear quite well with earbuds and the PockeTalker.
If you want to be able to hear your husband from anywhere in the motorhome when he’s driving, then a loop system or an FM system could work very well.
Cordially,
Neil
Hi, Neil, I am a mainly retired senior psychotherapist who has severe hearing loss. I would like to attend some training events in which there would be about 20 to 30 participants who would be speaking interactively in a medium sized room. I appreciate your information on loops. I have been attempting to deal with this kind of situation through using the Pocketalker with daisy chained Olympus boundary mikes, but find that the mikes are not sensitive enough, and that too much background noise is picked up at times. I am concerned that the problem I am having with the daisy chained mikes is the same kind of problem I would have with a portable loop system in that I also would need multiple mikes that could be daisy chained, and be sensitive enough so that perhaps only two mikes would be needed. And, I am also wondering if a multiple wireless mike setup is possible with my hearing aids. Thank you.
Hi Shirley:
You are correct, your problem is not whether to use a loop system or your PockeTalker as the amplifying device. Your problem is how to get an effective sound signal into whatever mics you are using, whether it is a loop system or PockeTalker.
Since the daisy-chained mics aren’t doing the job you need done, may I suggest a more elegant solution–the VoiceTracker microphone. This mic is an array of 8 microphones built into one unit that electronically whomever is talking–no matter where they are sitting in the room. You can see this mic or order it from http://hearinglosshelp.com/shop/voice-tracker-i-array-microphone/ .
I found it superior to my super-directional handheld mic that I would normally use in such situations–plugged into my PockeTalker.
Note: the VoiceTracker requires a power source so you need to plug it into a wall socket. You may have to come with an extension cord depending where you will be putting it. I would typically put it at the front of the room facing most of the attendees or people speaking.
One drawback would be if there is a lot of noise, the VoiceTracker will zero in on the loudest sound–and hopefully that will be the person talking–not some other noise. But apart from that, is is quite a remarkable microphone.
You should try it and see how well it works with your PockeTalker. All you need is a double-male audio patch cord to go from the mic to your PockeTalker mic jack.
You have a couple weeks to try it out and if it doesn’t work for you, send it back and get your money back. You won’t get stuck with something that doesn’t work for you.
And if you ever wanted to use it with a loop system, no problem–just plug it into the microphone input jack on the loop driver, so it is very versatile.
Cordially,
Neil
I’m a IT professional and we have a hard of hearing person in our company who would like to hear announcements coming over out PA system no matter where he is in the facility. Do you have suggestions.
Hi John:
That’s a tough one. I’d like such a gizmo too. I’m assuming your employee already wears hearing aids. If not, that would be the first step.
If he already wears hearing aids and still cannot hear/understand the announcements, then he’s out of luck unless the company wants to also make parallel announcements via email, texting or some sort of FM system.
Cordially,
Neil
Thank you so much for your helpful article.
I recently attended a presentation where I first learned about telecoil from one of the attendees. I’m doing research on behalf of the company who gave the presentation to help my new friend, and wondered how easy it is to set up a system at the various venues where they present.
In your description, it talks about stringing a loop wire around the room and taping it down. That seems confusing to me as a first time person learning about this telecoil thing. What kind of wire am I stringing around, and why does it have to circle the room (why is this helpful/required)? How easy is it to plug in the microphone to the loop amplifier and the regular sound system for everyone else? My friend said when he uses it for his television, only he can hear it and not everyone else. Would this be a problem in a venue presentation?
I’d like to send this detail to the company so they would be able to use this system in future presentations, since asking venues to do this does not make sense.
Thank you so much!
Hi Susan:
Loop systems are wonderful. I have both my office and my home looped.
The telecoil is only half of the loop system. Think of it as the receiver. The room loop is hooked up to a loop driver. Think of this as the transmitter. Current flowing through the room loop wire sets up a magnetic field around the wire and if you are in the loop, the magnetic field will induce an equal signal in your telecoil which you hear as sound when amplified by your hearing aids.
Setting up room loops in homes is quite simple. All you need is a loop driver and a loop of wire around the room. You hook your TV up to the loop driver and listen via the telecoil in your hearing aids.
Setting up a loop system in a public venue is much more complex (although the principles are the same). This is because when you loop a public facility, you need to install the loop system according to the IEC 60118-4 specification–and that takes a trained loop installer to do this.
But there are no restrictions on installing a home loop system yourself.
They call it a loop system for good reason. First the wire has to make a continuous loop around the area (room or part of a room) where you will be sitting. You’ve heard the phrase being “in the loop” meaning knowing what is going on. Well, loop systems give new meaning to this term. In order to hear, you must be “in the loop” (inside the looped area).
The size of the wire isn’t critical. But for home loops in a typical living room or den, we use 22 gauge stranded copper wire. This is a pretty small wire.
The reason you have to have a loop is the wire goes from the loop driver and then loops back to the loop driver–so this forms some sort of loop. The shape of the loop isn’t important. What is important is that you have one continuous piece of wire so the current can flow through it from the driver and back to the driver.
Most loop drivers have a jack at the back that you can plug a microphone into. It’s that simple.
However, this is not done all that often because for a home you typically plug a patch cord from your TV to the loop driver so you don’t need a microphone. And for meetings, you typically plug the loop driver into the output of the public address (PA) system and use the PA system’s microphone so the audience and the hard of hearing people using the loop hear exactly the same thing.
When you hook up you TV to a loop system, you can have it set so the hearing people control the TVs loudspeaker volume and you listen via the loop. They can turn the volume right off if they don’t want to hear the TV and you still hear via the loop loud and clear.
A wonderful little home loop driver is the Contacta HLD3. You can get it from the Center’s website at http://hearinglosshelp.com/shop/contacta-hld3-hearing-loop-system/ .
As I said, this works for home use and for small meetings. But for large venues with many people you’ll need a much larger commercial loop driver such as the HLD7 or HLD9, but you need to have a trained loop installer to set these up and adjust them to IEC standard 60118-4.
I don’t want to snow you under, but in such commercial venues, you no longer string a wire around the perimeter of the room but there are complex patterns you use and often use 2 or more loops at the same time to make an even signal that covers the whole room.
Incidentally, public venues are supposed to supply the looped system, not the people making the presentations–but they don’t necessarily do this.
If you want to learn more, let me know.
Cordially,
Neil
I’m not sure how the comments work, whether you can contact me directly to continue the conversation.
The size of the audience is about 60 people, so not overly large.
I had asked the manager at the venue, they’d never heard of this, so no surprise, they didn’t have telecoil. I doubt any of the other venues do either, which is why I asked about a setup they can take with them.
Is there a way to use a home version and loop this around the room where they present for the evening? Or they could conceivably set up a section for those who would like to use the telecoil feature while the rest of us who do not need it can sit outside of that area of the coil. Think good sized room, foldable chairs set up for the evening. Maybe the left side, up front can be set up, so it’s small but 20 people could fit (their family can sit with them).
I toss around ideas hoping something makes reasonable sense to try.
Thank you for your time!
Hi Susan:
I’ve answered you privately.
Cordially,
Neil
If hearing loops are being added as a floor installation on top of a rubber floor that would be cost prohibitive to remove, what is the best way to cover the wires so that they are both safe and blend into a sand/almond color flooring. We’ve had the recommendation of floor safety tape but because of their purpose to highlight an unsafe area, they are available in very bright colors. We have the option of gray. I’m trying to find a different product that will better match the existing floor.
Hi Angela:
If you want to put the loop wire on top of the floor PERMANENTLY, then we have just the stuff you want. It is a 2″ wide vinyl strip–and yes, it comes in a beige/sand color (among other colors) and when you stick it down it STAYS so people won’t trip over it. It is about 1 mm (1,000 mils) thick and protects the loop wire under it. I’d suggest you use flat wire (copper tape) rather than round wire so it lays flat without a bump. We can also supply the appropriate flat wire of the right gauge for your application.
The safety tape is typically very thin–about 4 mils and will show the bump for the round or flat wire and will wear off in time. The stuff I’m talking about is made to be driven over, walked over, jumped on, etc. so it’s tough, durable and will protect the loop wire.
If you want to see the exact color, or more information, email me privately. My email address is at the bottom of this (and every) page on the website.
Cordially,
Neil
We just purchased a new receiver. To use a home loop system, can we plug into our own receiver?
Thank you
Hi Carol:
I’m not clear on what you mean by a receiver. A loop system consists of a loop driver that plugs into your TV or home entertainment center. A loop receiver contains a t-coil. You plug your earbuds into the loop receiver and hear whatever is being sent by the loop driver. If you have hearing aids with t-coils, you don’t need a loop receiver at all.
Cordially,
Neil
Hello:
I am setting up a home loop system for my mom. My mom has always used her home landline phone with the t-coil setting. I am wondering now, if we loop much of her home and if the system is always on, will there be a problem using the phone within the loop? It is kind of a loop within a loop, no?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Hi Pat:
You are right–using a phone and t-coil while inside a room loop would mean you’d hear both signals at the same time–and likely not understand much of either. One solution is to turn off the loop driver before you answer the phone. An easy way to do this is to get a remote control wall plug switch and keep the remote by the phone. When the phone rings, just push the off button and the driver is instantly dead so you don’t hear the room loop when talking on the phone. If you were watching the TV, it can still be on and if you have the captions on, you can still watch the TV and read the captions while using the phone. When you hang up the phone, then push the “on” button on the remote and the loop driver comes on and you hear via the room loop again.
Another solution is not to loop the area where is phone is so when you go to answer the phone, you won’t hear the room loop. When they loop large venues such as ball stadiums, they have to leave common areas outside the seating areas when there is no loop so people can use their phones via t-coil and not hear the game, or whatever.
You can get a wireless indoor remote switch for just $13.00 from Amazon. I use one similar to this one at
https://www.amazon.com/Woods-32555WD-Weatherproof-Outdoor-Holiday/dp/B001Q9EFUK
It is easy to set up. Just plug the gizmo into the socket you have the loop driver plugged into and plug the loop driver into the gizmo. It’s that easy.
Cordially,
Neil
I’ve done some research on loop systems and was wondering how much a concrete floor with rebar will affect a small room loop. I know it has some effect, but would something like the HDL3 have the power and equalization needed to handle the losses in the floor?
Hi Cliff:
It can handle some metal loss. The real key is the size of the room and the configuration of the loop. Typically you make the loop smaller to accommodate metal loss in the floor.
For example, if you have a square room and use a perimeter loop an effective loop will have to be smaller than if you have a rectangular room and a perimeter loop with the same square footage in both rooms.
If you sit around the perimeter of the room anyway, you may not care that there is a donut-hole in the middle of the room that does not meet specs since you never sit there.
But you could make a square room loop a lot more effective if you used a square figure-of-eight configuration for the loop rather than a perimeter loop. This would involve running the loop wire across the center of the room to make essentially 2 smaller rectangular loops. This would work well if you ran the loop under the carpet.
For installing loops under the carpet we typically use flat wire rather than round wire so it lays flat and there is no bump in the carpet.
Cordially,
Neil
Hi there,
Thank you so much for your article. I really appreciate all of the information. I am part of a church that is meeting outside at a park during the summer and within a school during the school year. We have a member of our church who is hard of hearing and we would really like to make our services accessible to him. Is it possible to use a loop system outdoors, even on days when it is potentially sprinkling outside? Would this be our best option to help those who are hard of hearing to be able to fully hear and participate in our service? We would also need to be able to remove this each week and set it up again the following week. Thank you so much for any help that you can offer. I so appreciate it!
Hi Kristi:
Yes, you can lay the loop wire on the ground, whether dry or wet as the loop wire is insulated.
You just want to be sure it lays flat so no one trips over it. When you’re done, just roll it up and take it with you.
I assume your church has a sound system it uses in the Park that is safe from the rain under a canopy? You’d just have to plug a patch cord between an audio output from the sound board to the loop driver, plug in the loop wire to the driver, plug the driver into a power source, adjust the output, and that’s it. Or if you don’t have a sound system, you can just plug a microphone into the loop driver.
Contacta has a very nice portable, professional loop kit in a rolling carrying case for $3,570.00, which I’d highly recommend. Let me know if you are interested. I don’t show it on the website, but we carry it. Alternately, if that is too steep for your budget or you want a smaller portable system, let me know and I’ll work with your church to get what you need at a price you can afford.
Cordially,
Neil