If your Marvels have a telecoil, you could also plug a neckloop into the handheld receiver and just switch your hearing aids to t-coil mode. No additonal power needed.
On a cruise last year, I found all of the guides very willing to wear my remote mic. It worked fine. Just don’t forget to get it back!
Yeah, put a tag on it with your name and room number on it.
Good to know, Thanks! Mic sure is overpriced though. I wonder if it is on the VA list.
Just about any accessory you need is available from the VA.
Just curious, are cruises even happening now?
Cruise is a year off, but they book quickly.
You’ve got guts - even scheduling a trip on a floating petri dish. I hope they wll refund $ you paid if/when trip is cancelled. Even if vaccine is discovered/invented by next spring - that doesn’t mean that infections will suddenly disappear.
OTH - trip does sound interesting. Since we take planes and cars to travel around the world - can’t even make plans.
The River cruises only carry a couple hundred. Viking doesn’t allow kids. Just about everybody is in the target population so will probably be hyper alert. I purchased cancel for any reason insurance as well. If you want to cruise with Viking you need to plan way ahead. I’m hoping things get a lot better by July 2021 but I can delay it at least another year beyond that without losing the whole payment. So I dont have a lot of guts but I do have a bucket list.
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On my Viking river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam in 2013 I was able to use the Compilot on all the shore excursions. I just connected Viking’s personal receiver (on a lanyard) to the Compilot with a pin plug cable, and all of the guide’s audio came directly into my Phonak Audéos … even from about 100 feet away. It’s really too bad the Compilot doesn’t work with Marvels!
Domedish, your best solution would be any of the Roger remote microphones but perhaps best would be the Roger Pen or EasyPen (essentially the same), since that can be worn on a lanyard by the guide, or you can hold it and point it directionally at the guide. The following may be of interest. I have Phonak Marvel M90-RT h/a from VA with Roger Select and Roger PartnerMic, as well as TV Connector (which is not a Roger device but works with the h/a using a different Bluetooth signal modulation scheme that some call Airstream.) The TV Connector conveniently works with the TV audio output which is a fiber optic signal. Wife has older Siemens h/a and was having trouble with room audio, even with a multi speaker surround sound system. I could perhaps have replaced the TV Connector with one of the Roger devices, but we wanted independent control of the audio, and she wanted her own arrangement anyway for tours, etc. So she got a Roger EasyPen and a Roger Mylink on eBay. The EasyPen sits in its base which is then wired to the headphone jack of the surround sound system. I intentionally did not pair my h/a with it in order to avoid duplicate signal feed from both it and the TV Connector. The Roger EasyPen connection cuts off the speakers but we don’t care since when sitting to watch TV we have audio directly into the h/a. The Roger EasyPen, like the Roger Pen, streams audio to her Roger MyLink and she either plugs headphones into it instead of using her h/a, or as per the original intent sets the h/a on telecoil which is the usual way a MyLink connects with h/a of any manufacturer, as long as they have a t-coil setting. She can control the audio level either directly with the buttons on the MyLink, with her h/a buttons or with the volume control for the surround sound system which is the easiest and provides a finer level of adjustment. I can do so with my h/a volume control or via buttons on the top of the TV Connector, but I rarely have to adjust it. Meanwhile, she can watch TV with no speaker audio so I don’t need to hear it if I don’t want to, and vice versa. BTW, be aware that a MyLink without the preceding word Roger is for FM transmitters and is not compatible with Roger devices. You must have a Roger MyLink which so states on the faceplate of the device, which will also have a s/n beginning 13 or higher. As mentioned earlier, the Roger MyLink will not work with a Phonak TV Connector. If you need a regular MyLink (not Roger) for use with the older Phonak Inspiron Wireless Dynamic FM Transmitter or similar device, let me know because I have two of those. Also, an alternative to Viking River Cruises is Grand Circle Tours (GCT), the small ship and river cruise side of OAT, Overseas Adventure Travel. We’ve gone on two OAT trips with excellent experiences, and had a GCT Danube cruise booked for later this month, which we hope to reschedule when it’s safe to do so. If you are interested in OAT or GCT tours, send me a message and I can give you a discount code that’s available to their past travelers.
Sounds like the Phonac Partnermic is the best fit for me. Kinda pricey at $200 ,so I hope VA will help with that. I would not even have to carry around the viking supplied receiver. It works at 2.4 Ghz, though, and wonder if bodies in the crowd will interfere.
A cheaper possibility would be to purchase a bluetooth transmitter dongle which would plug into the Viking receiver. Dongles cost around $30. Not sure though if it would pair with Marvels, though. Anyone tried it? They are commonly used to connect bluetooth headsets.
Same 2.4 ghz concern with body blocking.
The advantage of Roger Pen (or EasyPen) over Roger PartnerMic is that it has the additional hand-held directional pickup feature, which could obviate the need to surrender your device to a tour guide. On the other hand, a guide may not speak very loudly, especially in consideration of other nearby tour groups or in a religious or museum setting, expecting that his listeners would have the benefit of their individual radio receivers and earbuds. If that turned out to be the case, you could provide it to the guide with the neck lanyward attached, same as for a PartnerMic. I would not expect crowds to be a problem in picking up the signal from a mic of whichever model when worn by your guide. The transmitted beamwidth of such a device is not narrow, and the signal will bounce around and be reflected in the area, even if you sought to be distanced from the rest of the group. VA should be receptive to your need. In my case, I had done the research on available accessories and my audiologist was also aware of most of their features, so was amenable to providing what I requested for the differential uses which I articulated. TV Connector because it has a fiber optic input to match the audio output available on my TV. Roger Select for table top, conference/social group settings. PartnerMic for one to one reception. (Roger Select will do that too, but I did not want to risk damage to it in that kind of more volatile, mobile setting, and happily, the audiologist was pretty amenable to my rationale.)
Regular BT, like phone to Marvels is of inferior quality than the connection between marvels and roger mics or marvels and tv connector. Partner mic uses the same thing as tv connector.
What I mean by that?
Phone BT needs clear view, and if you have a wall between you and phone and add distance, signal cuts out. My rough estimate based on my apartment, 10m clear sight, ok, but same distance or less with a wall (so turn into another room), break signal.
Roger and TV connector on the other hand go through several walls (concrete and plaster type) and bigger distance, like 15m, no cut. I have one single spot that I found so far in my apartment where signal will die, and that’s the opposite side of apartment, and TV is close to the side, not in the middle.
I wouldn’t worry about bodies, just distance in closed venues. And if in open, that could be a problem, so mitigate it by closer distance and clear line of sight.
Phone BT to marvels work ok even in my bag in open (nearest building is 50m away, I’m on a bridge but no walls there either), only condition is that it’s directly between my HAs. So in a plane that would cut me perpendicular to the ground through my nose, leaving each HA on its side. If I turn my head, signal dies in one HA.
I didn’t test roger mics or TV connector in the same situation.
However, be warned. For roger mics to work you need to buy roger receiver. In case of marvels since the hardware is there you need only what I call licence /key part.
You can obtain it by buying device which name ends in ‘iN’ (comes with 2) or 2x roger x receiver for dai shoes and transferring the licence with a device (your fitter can do that).
Also, you need only one iN device, because you don’t need more than one ‘licence’ in your HA (nor you can install more than one).
But you can pair your HA with bunch of mics once you have that ‘licence’ in it.
With partner mic and tv connector you don’t need roger license because they’re not roger mics. And that’s one of the reasons why they’re cheaper.
So, BT dongle could work (HA is in pairing mode for a few seconds when you turn it on, if that helps with info how to pair it, I have no experience), but parter mic should handle better the distance and obstacles.
Oh and sound quality of phonak or roger devices is much better compared to BT. I mean for speech. That was my main focus of comparison.
Hope this helps somewhat 
Edit pen vs easy pen, for pen you can choose and fix the mode (lanyard, omni, interview, automatic) while easy is only in automatic, using gyroscope. I don’t like when devices think too much what I want, I want to tell them what I want.
Distance at which lanyard works is around the neck, but outside in the restaurant it didn’t pick up voice even at 15cm or closer. I think only at 5cm.
Interview mode was significantly better and could pick up the same very soft spoken person from around 50cm.
Omni was completely useless in that specific situation.
But you couldn’t lay down easy pen and fix it in interview mode and point (eg on a glass) to spare yourself of holding it.
A bluetooth dongle might actually be the best idea In this circumstance, because the transmission only has to travel from the viking receiver on my person to the hearing aids in my ears. It’s worth a $30 experiment, I think. The only wrinkle is that normal communication with my smartphone would be lost. If I can make the dongle work at home, I think I will be in good shape assuming the hearing aids can dumb down to being a headset.
Tried pairing my bluetooth tv directly to my Marvels. It paired easily enough but I got a garbled signal instead of audio. I kinda feared this would be the case. Phonak adheres to the bluetooth standard, but that does not prevent them from sending voice data in a different format. So… a dongle will not work. I am buying an external usb battery. About the same size as phonak FM transmitter. I will plug the viking receiver (the thing they hang around your neck) into the phonak FM transmitter. I will power the FM transmitter with the external power pack. If anyone else in the group has Marvels, they can enjoy unencumbered audio. Hopefully, airport security will not think I am carrying a bomb!
Hm, could it be that you tv BT is old version, and marvels might not support old bt?
I mean, marvels do pick up bt from phone and both cases, media and calls. I don’t see why they wouldn’t pick up tv, if tv sends the same type of signal.
My first bt device is marvels so I don’t have many gadgets to play with and test.
About usb battery, just have it in cabin luggage and easy to get out, so together with phone, laptop and so on. Just dump at that box, only one layer of devices and that’s it. So, don’t have all those devices in one closed bag you plan dump into the box because you’ll need to get them out anyway. I bring battery all the time, never problems.
But they’re not allowed to go into the storage, all lithium ion battery powered devices must go in the cabin. Pressure and whatnot.
Thanks for the tip on the battery. I had been considering connecting battery and fm transmitter before leaving. Imagine them seeing multiple little devices with interconnecting wires!
Yeah, don’t push your luck
It’s not that hard to plug all that in a few minutes after you get out of the plane, if you immediately need it.
Not sure if my picture uploaded, but I will describe it. I purchased an auxiliary USB battery which i used to power my tv connector. The tv connector comes with a Male to Male cord which allows me to connect to any device with a headset connector. The battery came with a short cord which supplies power to two USB connections. The same cord is used to charge up the battery by turning it around to plug the smaller end into the battery, and the USB connector into a power source capable of sourcing 2A at 5V. By happy coincidence, the cord which came with the battery also has the correct plug to supply power to the TV connector.
I can keep the small battery and connected tv connector in a pants pocket, if I want to. The longer connector can easily reach the receiver hanging around my neck, supplied by Viking.
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Forgot to mention that I plugged it into my ipad… worked great!