Just relied it with my brand new Phonak M90-RT in a room with admittedly poor acoustics. It worked wonderfully!
What is the downside (if any) of having telecoil available in the HA?
It makes the devices slightly larger, is the only downside I can think of physically. It can be confusing for some users to increase the number of programs to include it as well.
The upsides definitely outweigh either of those for me!
who the hell needs telecoil anymore when we have Bluetooth and texting? lol
and in movie theaters and events, I can still hear thankfully
Here is where Tcoil is handy for me - as well as bluetooth. The Tcoil gives you more control over what your device mics are doing. In a noisy environment on a phone call I can essentially turn off the device mics and just hear what is being said on the phone. Helps a lot for word recognition for me. I have a CI in one ear and can quickly flip with my remote from pure Telecoil to a 50/50 mix.
good point too BTW
Yes!
I am surprised how many people here say no, or find it too fiddly. One of the few POSITIVE things I get out of my loss is the telecoil! I use mine in manual mode, and turn off any of the features that automatically turn it on or sense the magnet. When I want the telecoil on, I have to manually switch to that program. I also exclusively use it with the mic completely off.
This lets me hear music as clear as day regardless of environmental sound⌠To me, there is nothing better than flying down a dirt path on my bike or motorcycle even, and everything is completely muted except for my music⌠driving in a car on the freeway, in a noisy room, on the bus, etc⌠its like the ultimate headphones. Also, another benefit is (I have a profound loss) I can BLAST music and nobody else can hear it. Whereas with traditional headphones I really have to crank them up and even at full level they generally arenât loud enough. (PS- I usually use a loop)
Also, this may be geeky, but friends of mine consider it a superpower. Iâve had people ask me to use my telecoil to determine if a device is on, or if a wire is electrically hot, as I can usually lean in and pick up the interference generated. Sometimes, but rarely does the interference be a problem. Sometimes on planes I do have to lean a specific way to avoid too much interference, or Iâve noticed near the back of a bus the motor generates a lot of interference as well, but in most situations, especially when away from motors or big industrial places this is not an issue.
-Plus, once I happened to be walking down a wash during a downpour, and instead of just turning off my aids I just swapped to telecoil to mute the mic and enjoy the silence, and a lightning bolt struck very close nearby. Iâll never forget how it sounded, and still think about it today. No crack, no thunder, just a vibrato hum/sizzle of pure, raw energy! I am one of probably very few people who have heard lightning only from its pure electromagnetic dicharge and no actual sound/waves. How cool is that?!
old thread but applies to meâŚ
I was going to get fitted with the 312 model, but asked specifically for the 13TâŚjust like the OP (dondotashe)!
Just negligibly larger aids with significantly more battery
Also, at the time I didnât know much about T-coil, but knew that our church has an FM system and assumed that it might also work with t-coilâŚmaybe other places too. Saw a youtube video about looped rooms and I was sold (I think it was dr cliff)
So far I have found no place that was looped.
I have not used it for itâs original purpose (old landline phones)
I bought a neck loop to try plugging into my computerâs phone jack in place of headphones⌠but I get too much static in my âchairâ at home.
I bought my own FM receiver that uses a neckloop. Used it only a few times so far at church, but I love it for that! I bring it every time but only need to use it when we have a foreign priest with heavily accented broken english.
i keep hoping to find a service booth, ticket counter, theater, etcâŚwith a room or area loop.
Regardless, Iâm happy to have it!
I find the t-coil most useful using a standard landline telephone. As a hearing aid wearer for many years, I still prefer a landline phone over a cell phone if its going to be a lengthy call. For me, the voice quality is still better than a cell phone.
Interesting take on telecoils: Stop Trash-Talking Telecoils! â Gael Hannan â Better Hearing Consumer
Quote:
I donât know how to say this more clearly: Telecoils in my hearing aids have made my life better .
Better, happier, easier, and more connected. And Iâm not the only one â there are gazillions of us. Because of this positive experience, itâs frustrating for us â the hearing loss advocates and international organizations â to hear that audiologists are advising against telecoils, saying theyâre âold technologyâ and here, try this newest, greatest thing!
Without telecoils, I wouldnât have been able to use the phone as well as I have for the past 20 years. I still use it to talk on the phone, both cell and landline, daily.
Without telecoils, I would continue jostling for space at the front of a group or crowd, to sit in the front row so that I could better see and lipread the speaker. Now I can stand at the back of a crowded hall â like I recently did at the national conventions of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association and the Hearing Loss Association of America. In plenary sessions and smaller workshops, the speakersâ voices flowed beautifully into my devices. (Bluetooth canât do that â the poor speaker would have 100 transmitters handing around her neck or pinned to his clothes.)
Without telecoils, I wouldnât have been able to use audio guides in museums, art galleries, boat tours and other facilities around the world that care about inclusion for people with hearing loss. I would have had to rely on imperfect relay by the Hearing Husband or get by just with the visual information.
Iâve used telecoils in other looped environments such as at church, at the bank, and watching TV. When Iâm presenting or performing, in addition to the audience area being looped, I ask for the stage area to be looped as well, because it lets me hear myself better (always a good thing for the presenter).
Still, many audiologists say that telecoils are âoldâ technology, as if discoveries come with a âUse Byâ date when they are suddenly no longer useful. I mean, hey! What about the wheel? Itâs a very old invention â and to this day, wheels still make our world go âround. Like the song says: big wheel keep on turninâ ! Penicillin and insulin were invented in the 1920âs and they are still saving lives. So, while telecoils are decades-old, they still provide crucial and exquisite access to communication.
Hearing care professionals need to stop trash-talking telecoils, because people with hearing loss around the world love them! We love how switching our devices to the telecoil mode connects us to other people. And itâs not an âeither-orâ situation. We also love what Bluetooth does for us when we can use it. We adore the improvements in speech-to-text technology. We are passionate about captioning.
We want it all and today we can have it all â but only if hearing care professionals put client needs first and look at our overall, everyday hearing requirements. And if they are still not convinced â simply because we say so â we strongly recommend they attend a consumer hearing loss event. There, they can see for themselves the look on the face of a person with hearing loss when they use telecoils for the first time in a workshop or when someone sings the national anthem. That look of wonder is worth a CEU (Continuing Education Credit).
If youâre a person whose hearing care professional tries to talk you out of a telecoil, be polite but firm: Give. Me. A. Telecoil! And if that doesnât work, find a more person-centered care clinic.
Agree with above but I happen to regularly attend medical and educational conferences where telecoil is standard. Other than those venues I have found very few places that are looped. However I believe that the new Bluetooth, whenever it arrives, Will probably replace telecoil.
i was surprisedâŚrecent trip to both NYC and Washington DC visiting museums and various visitor centers, I found zero places to use my t-coil.
Also visited my parents, who have the only old fashioned phone I know of and couldnât tell if my t-coil even worked with it. The dial tone was so loud coming out of the earpiece that I couldnât tell if the aids were picking it upâŚand yes I switched to t-coil mode.
Some think of a telecoil as being useful only in a venue that is looped. Itâs true that not many places are looped in most states. (If youâe in MI or WI, youâre in luck. Those states are well looped.) But loops are of tremendous value in all states because many places provide assistive listening devices: theaters, museum docent guides or even recorded guides, tour guides. If they provide ear buds, or people bring their own, you should bring your neck loop. After all, with ear buds you donât get the amplification you need thatâs programmed into your hearing aids. Plug the neck loop in the listening device instead of the ear buds, and you will be able to understand the speaker as well as can with your hearing aids and a person sitting next to you, with all background noise eliminated.
Havenât had HAs with telecoil or seen the technology around here in Europe since I used this over fifty years agoâŚ
I use t-coils at our church for every service. I am looking for a neck loop at this time.
When I am with a tour group, they often use a system where the tour leader has a microphone and transmitter and each guest has a receiver and earbuds (or sometimes a speaker that clips over the ear.) For a trip I took last month, I bought a neck loop and enabled the T-coil program on my aids. It worked great - the sound was better than I get through the cheap earbud/speaker they hand out.
Good tip! Yes, it is a shame this stone-age technology (dating from the 1940sâŚ) is not more widely (systematically) deployed, as it can cover far larger areas than Bluetooth and doesnât require 1:1 connectivity. Reviews say it is used more in Europe than the US, but I donât see much of this here.
The UK, and I believe the EU (EN 17210 inclusive requirements for public spaces across Europe, 2021) makes it mandatory to implement hearing loops in public spaces, so hopefully things will improve.
As cvkemp notes, this is extremely useful in churches, which tend to be large and where acoustics appear to be rather designed to encourage monastic silence. I liked the technology a lot when I last used it as a kid.
Bluetooth is a relatively short-distance connectorâabout 30 feet, while telecoil with a hearing loop can connect in a VERY large spaceâbig auditorium etc.
BTWâthe new Jabra Enhance Proâs LACK the telecoil, BUT the relevant external microphoneâthe Multi-MicâDOES include a telecoil, so if you have a Multi-Mic, you have a telecoil available!
I did the same thing on a guided tour/trip to Europe. I heard much better than anyone else on the tour, and was able to stand at the back of the group. Heard perfectly!
I have had a telecoil for many years - I think I have only used it in a public place once or twice in that time.
HOWEVER, I use it all the time when using over ear headphones - they have magnetic speaker coils and work really well with telecoil. It prevents uncontrollable feedback when the ears are cupped by the headphones and leads to greatly enhanced music listening, especially when I am recording or mixing music productions - I hope a telecoil option will continue for many years.