I’m wondering if anyone can give me any advice for improving comprehension at amateur theatre performances. I watched my child’s high school play and had no problem hearing the actors but great difficulty understanding words if I could not see the actors’ lips. I missed so so much and hope not to repeat the experience. I comprehend decently in other environments so my settings aren’t an issue.
Any options other than asking for front row center seats? I feel they may be willing to reserve for me, but I’m hoping for another option as I feel pretty rude asking for prime seats if there are other options and don’t want to act entitled or put them on the spot.
I don’t know what systems they have and I don’t even know what questions I would need to ask to find out if they do have options I can tap into.
Actors have microphones. I don’t have t-coil but I do have Bluetooth if that would help.
On the positive side, the hearing aids did such a fantastic job of cutting out ambient noise that I could hear better than most during intermission with a gym full of chatty people.
We don’t see an audiogram, so don’t know your hearing loss.
I used to do theatre and have spent a lot of time attending theatre.
Frankly, I would suggest that just in case, you get a copy of the script and have it on your phone to follow along.
Possibly, your child could be wearing a microphone just for your hearing aids.
Possibly you could arrange to have your TV adapter connected to the mixer out of the theatre soundboard.
Possibly, you could get a 32 bit floating point digital recorder - like a rode go II, contact me if interested for other options. Connect that to the mixing board.
OR you could skillfully mount that, it is so very light, or with a wired lavalier mic to it, you can clip it to something near a speaker that you know will have all the dialogue.
Thing is that with 32bit floating point, you can later make near dead silence sound strong in an audio or video editing program.
No doubt others here will offer practical suggestions, but I wanted to provide some ideas they may not.
My suggestions are based on your desire to experience your child’s efforts.
Not specifically to enjoy the show only that day, but to have your child know that you could appreciate what they had done. Thus having it immortalized in some way, would mean a lot. Very likely either you could have some friend, or pro record video of it, or suggest, or find out if they are making a video recording.
Buy their recording.
THEN with your personal audio recording I explained above, it is possible to SYNCRONIZE the audio with the video ( which also recorded sound but lame sound no doubt ) so you have the clear strong audio, with the video.
You can reach out to me, and I can do that for you… everything can be done online nowadays, you can send me the video and the audio digitally and I could help you since this is the first time this has come up, I would be happy to help you.
OH and while you are at it, you could try to convey through your child, possibly to their director as well, that as part of their performance delivery, they should actually be concentrating on e n u n c i a t i o n; PROJECTION, clarity. So often performers mumble today. I had posted a link to an explanation about that occurring in movies nowadays.
EDIT: Well actually now that I think about it, if they hire a real pro to record it, the pro should connect his digital recorder as described above directly to the soundboard, and that way the video will have audio as if you were right there on the stage.
This is where Auracast is going to fix things for those of us using hearing aids with that capability. It is a lot cheaper to use Auracast then to install a t-coil system.
You can help get the ball rolling by studying some of the threads here and then go to the theater with your information.
Thank you so much for taking the time to offer so many suggestions and ideas to explore.I truly appreciate all the time you took to respond.
The next performance won’t be until early next school year so I have time to explore the options. Thank you for the generous offer to help! Hopefully one of the suggestions will lead to a live enjoyment and understanding.
As for my audiogram, I don’t have it handy but will upload to be helpful in future. I have moderate loss sloping to close to profound in upper ranges. The volume was fine, just missed a lot of the speech sounds.
Hearing aids aren’t massively effective in maintaining a directional pattern at over 12 foot range (speech at this range is likely to be resolved by normal hearing as much through reflected signals versus the original signal).
Your best bet (quick and easy) might be to use a remote mic feature on an iPhone. (Sorry, just saw it was a Phonak). A Bluetooth streamer from a mic at the front might help.
Since you have a Phonak I would suggest you get a Roger On IN which can be used as a remote mic if it is placed on or near the stage. One can be purchased very reasonably on EBay. If you choose to do that, be sure to buy a model that has “in” at the end of the model name. Many folks here would help you get it set up.
Right- the distance between the audio source and your HA microphone is the problem here. There is a reason why people in the movie industry employ boom operators. If the microphone sits too far away, no postproduction effort will bring back audible dialogue. So you will need some kind of relay system, as people here propose.
Alternatively, getting a copy of the script sounds like an excellent idea, if you are a speed reader.
This gets at a solution. The Roger mics are so expensive!
I wear Jabra HAs (sister of ReSounds) and have a Multi-Mic, an external mic for the brand, which I have used quite successfully as you describe, laying it up front on a corner of a stage or lectern (for lectures).
As I have a cable input to my hearing aids (via an Oticon Streamer, now obsolete), I use the headphone output of a hand held digital recorder. I put it in record mode and press pause, so I’m not actually recording which may be banned in the theatre. I also turn off the HA mics to reduce audience noise around me.
So I’m basically using the recorder microphone to give me better sound. It’s better than my bluetooth HA microphone, which sacrifices quality for low latency (delay).
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and other disability regulations in other countries, theaters are required to provide “Assistive Listening Systems” for people with hearing loss. These systems bring the theater audio directly to your ear.
