2 of the 3 HAs sold by Costco do not have tcoil. I currently have ks6, and use blue tooth for my iphone 11 pro.
I attend a large church with very high ceiling. It seats around 1200. I hear fine now but at one time had a lot trouble hearing. I am not sure what changed, but hearing is good now. I attend church weekly and it is very important that I hear services clearly.
I do not attend concerts or other places where tcoil is needed.
I do know they use tcoil for some people but I have never knowingly used it.
On the one hand telecoil is slick and wireless and discrete. On the other, there are very few induction loops out in the real world to make use of it.
I suspect you use made for iphone for those ks6’s.
I doubt you’re inadvertently using any available telecoil. Usually one has to change to a telecoil program on the HA’s. Unless yours is just on all the time and if you happen to walk into an induction loop you’ll suddenly hear amplified sounds.
Do you have Phone clip+ to go with your HAs? It seems to me that you might be able to use a telecoil loop with your phone clip to feed your HAs. But I don’t really know anything about your HAs.
I’m not much of an Apple guy but could you use the phone as a remote mic which would mfi to the aids? Or are you just wondering if that’s what’s happening. I don’t know if there’s a toggle to turn off mfi unless you’re the type that just leaves everything on all the time.
The church did something to their audio a few years that has greatly improved my hearing services. I do not recall anything I did that might have contributed to that, i.e. phone upgrade, etc.
If you want to use telecoil, and your HAs don’t have it, an intermediary device may provide a way. But if you are happy I’m not sure what you’re asking.
Generally, no. But its good to have it than not. I don’t rely much on Tcoil but if Tcoil is available, I would loved to try it. Use it or don’t at all.
In the near future, LE bluetooth technology (required Bluetooth 5.3+ or even 6) will replace Tcoil which is old tech.
As I understand it, bluetooth is a one to one connection. One transmitter, one receiver. The beauty of an induction loop and the telecoil is that the induction loop kind of generally broadcasts in its area. Any and all telecoils can pick it up. As many people as can fit in the loop can use it.
Bluetooth LE Audio can be connectionless. So one to however-many-are-in-range. It might be 5 to 10 years before op’s church gets an Auracast transmitter, so it’s hard to advise someone to wait.
Op’s hearing is not going to get better, hearing in church is a priority, church has an induction loop. I’d go with tcoil unless there’s a compelling reason not to.
I have experimented with Marvels with t-coils and I am not impressed. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a looped venue so I cannot address the convenience issue. My church uses FM so I tried a personal loop around my head connected to the FM receiver. The sound quality was OK for speech but poor for music. (My old HA’s with a Compilot and MLXi gave me superb sound quality). I tried the t-coil with a landline phone (with HA mic’s muted) and it picked up interference.
These are just my results and others may have better experience.
I have tcoil in my aids. I’ve never used it. However, a tcoil aid will add several hours of battery life to a rechargeable aid. For me, this was enough to go ahead and get the tcoil version of the Signia Ax aids I use. True, they’re a tiny bit larger behind the ear. I don’t care. As such, there is no downside and only upside to getting the tcoil.
My small Church doesn’t have tcoil availability, but I don’t need it there. I may well find myself in a different situation where it’s available. I have to figure out how to use the damn function!
Depending on where I sit in church, t-coil is useful to hear speech. However, music is terrible over t-coil, and it’s monaural. When there’s good music, I switch the t-coil off and get the ambience of the space.
My church only uses one channel for the sound so the only stereo part is what your ears may pick up. They don’t do loop, they have an FM transmitter. I feed the audio out from the receiver to my Roger On media cable. Works well when someone is speaking. Lousy for music as others have said. I switch to a music program when we sing. I do a lot of switching around in church!
Thanks to everyone’s responses. I appreciate your comments.
As I said, I hear in church fine now with my KS6s without using telecoil. I use blue tooth for phone and never have problems there. However, it seems tcoil is a useful feature for public venues, assuming they have that ability.
This is a brief youtube explanation of tcoil:
I also checked Phillips 9040 specs and it includes tcoil which is contrary to a review I read about it.
It may not be a deal breaker for me, but definitely a nice to have.
I will update you after I meet with Costco on 24th.
