I was under the impression that telecoil is something different from magnets? Yes he activated something and I will test this with one client where I know that they have this capability in their phone. My phone is a Gigaset Dx800a and apparently is hearing aid compatible telephone but neither the Oticon nor the Resound does anything different with this phone.
I will ask him to confirm on this point.
I do hear better with my mobile phone than the landline, but I work on clients sites and once in a while, I need to use their landline to make long phone calls to support for a 3rd party product. So I really need to be able to hear properly on the phone. You should ask your audio to look into your issue as you should not have to put up with problems like that. I did not have this problem with my Resound aids, so maybe your aids just need adjustment.
Yes that is a possibility as the sound is muddy on a phone is the best way to best describe it. I find it very difficult to understand what someone is saying.
I am going to ask the chap when my trial expires because I do have a major problem with hearing guys on the phone. Women not so much - maybe they speak better, louder or because of higher frequency, but guys are terrible on the phone.
I will actually take my landline phone in and we can look at this together, because the phone is supposed to be hearing aid compatible.
Is there a reason you can’t use your mobile when on site at these clients?
You might be able to attach a magnet on the client phone (temporarily) to trigger the telecoil to hear on both sides and amplification. Once set up of course.
Because I use PAYGO as I very rarely need to make phone calls either on my behalf or on behalf of my client. The only time that I use the client’s phone is when I know its going to be a long call and its an 0800 number. Much cheaper to use a landline than mobile.
I could have a magnet that I carry with me and I can see if this works, however I never had such problems hearing on the phone before with my Resound (I have never used a magnet, although I think it will help improve my hearing on the phone, its never been essential as it were).
Sounds like some settings issues. Volusiano would be better able to speak OPN on this.
But if you were to use your own phone, you would know that you have a reliable method of communication entirely in your control for your needs.
Some aids have a program that turns on the telecoil. I suspect that your aids don’t even have the telecoil. Telecoil is old tech but useful in a number of situations. It should work well with the old style handsets.
@rasmus_braun Might be able to tell you which brands have a telecoil program.
So am I correct, that it’s magnets that is the new technology now? Telecoil is obsolete?
Relatively obsolete. It never really caught on in the US but more useful in Europe. With phones it captures the magnetic waves and enhances call. However, it was designed for old phones that had a magnetic speaker. Your phones have a rating that shows how well it works. Most laws require this.
Most Phones in the Uk do not support telecoil and I think that this is the main reason why it never really caught on here as I have never had the opportunity to use a phone that supported it.
I’m no expert but I think some concepts are overlapping here.
As I understand it, what didn’t catch on in North America was the hearing loop in public places. Apparently these were far more prevalent in Europe. The telecoil picks up sound via induction and that is played to the HA speakers. Nice and discrete.
The magnet was used as the triggering of the telecoil feature due to indeed the lack of magnets in modern phone speakers.
Then, these modern phones are supposed to provide some sort of HA compatibility so that the telecoil can be triggered. Failing that then one can use a magnet to trigger the telecoil.
Obviously the HA has to have a telecoil installed and be set up to be triggered by a magnet and to automatically go to the telecoil program.
That’s what I understand anyway.
You probably are right - more for cinemas, concert halls etc. I never needed it for that. The landline was another story, but it depends on the phone. Those old fashioned phones made forty years ago - they were brilliant. Modern phones are crap in comparison, they are made too cheaply.
Anyway, I will ask my audio what he suggests.
It’s very simple. The landline headset usually uses a conventional speaker in the headset. Conventional speakers employ a magnetic base connected and driven by the audio signal. This magnetic base vibrates on the audio signal, causing the paper cone connected to it to vibrate along, moving the air and creating the sound that you hear.
In addition to vibrating the cone paper, the magnetic base in the speaker also creates a magnetic field that corresponds to the audio signal.
If the hearing aid is equipped with a telecoil, this telecoil is induced with this magnetic field when the handset speaker is applied against the hearing aid. This magnetic induction on the telecoil recreates the audio signal and it’s delivered to the hearing aid for processing. So in the telecoil mode, you don’t get the audio signal from the hearing aid mic, you get it from the telecoil. You can even mute your hearing aid mics to block external sounds and listen to the phone’s audio signal only. No special noise reduction is needed.
The only time when you need a fake magnet on the OPN is when you have a non telecoil version of the OPN and you need to trick it into the Autophone mode which relies on the magnetic field of a conventional speaker from either a landline handset or headphone’s to be activated. Like when you use a cell phone which doesn’t use the conventional speaker style. This Autophone mode helps pick up the sound from the hearing aid mic more effectively, but it’s still not as clean and ideal as the telecoil because it’s still using the hearing aid mic which has its own limitation when applied against the conventional speakers.
With the telecoil version of the OPN, in the telecoil phone mode, you’ll be able to get the best audio from landline phones. And you can even mute your hearing aid mics to block out external noise while you’re on the phone because the phone audio source is picked up by the telecoil and not the hearing aid mic.
That is confusing as that directly contradicts what two audios have said unless I have misunderstood them. I will speak to my chap and find out what I have. But yes, I need something like what you describe. My Resound Hearing Aids had this functionality then it was lost along one of the adjustments.
I will get back to you with what my audio says. Thanks
Different type of construction - older handsets used coils and iron core dynamic speakers within the receiver. This made for heavy and large handsets that required a reasonable voltage to shift. ~ Modern landline handsets tend to use a piezo-ceramic speaker that needs far less power and is lighter to build into a device.
Also looking at your loss, I’m guessing that the OPN is a bit shy on power/coupling into your ear especially in the lower pitches. Your audiologist should be able to provide you with an enhanced program for phone use.
The slightly unusual shape of your loss also may indicate LF dead-spots in the basilar membrane - that aren’t easily identified due to nearby overlapping frequencies. The issue with the phone accentuates the problem as the bandwidth compresses due to the way telephones work. In your case, low pitch sounds that would sound OK one to one are likely compressed to a slightly higher, narrower band, if this band sits on a dead-spot around 500-750z then it may still be difficult to hear even when amplified. This would be true of the telecoil also, as it operates over the same bandwidth as the phone.
Your mobile phone operates on a different technology platform that isn’t constrained in the same way.
Interesting information. I would love to get an old fashioned phone. For people with hearing difficulties they are much better by far. My Gran had one and it was really good.
I have just got an email back from my audio. He says that I have the non telecoil one and he has posted me a magnet that I can try. The telecoil aid would be bigger. I am not really fussed about telecoil as I have always used phones without telecoil and its not been a problem, although admittedly it does help.
Your explanation makes sense - the sounds on the phone sound slightly distorted in a way that compression would distort I guess and for some reason the Resound seem to handle this whereas the Oticon struggle? Is this what you mean when you say that the Oticon is a bit shy on power/coupling for lower frequencies.
Is there a way to test for LF dead spots? What you say does explain why I have always found it easier to hear and understand women compared to men relatively speaking.
I have been toying with the idea of getting an REM. I did ask my audio about it and he said it would not necessarily result in a better hearing fit as its not a simple case of doing the test and adjusting the aids to match that test. I don’t know. Is it worth getting a real ear measurement in light of the issues that I am having?
Thank you.
The default Oticon prescription is a little bit weedy and they used to have issues with lower pitch resonances as their feedback manager/phase canceller wasn’t effective below 1KHz. You can easily test the other aspect - does the sound get clearer when you put a finger over the back of the receiver in your ear?
As for the dead spots - that’s a little bit of a leap based on the work that the ISVR in Southampton did a few years ago where they basically computer modelled the basilar membrane and reproduced similar audiograms for different dead-spot positions. In the HF the dead-spots produce much steeper notches but in the lows the centre tends to be flat with a ‘pie-crust’ reverse notch about 2khz. I can’t remember the precise argument, but in the LF, the larger overall movement of the basilar membrane - looking something like a tongue stretched out like an ironing board - resulted in more adjacent disturbance vs the HF sounds. The only way to check is to remove the cochlear…
REM will help identify if the aids are under powered - it’s likely they are, as there’s a lot less emphasis put on the frequencies below 1Khz than above.
Is a Captioned phone possible for you? I used CaptionCall in the US previously and was very impressed. It’s live-captioned I believe, rather than text-to-speech and being able to see the words as well as having a LOT of control over the phone volume, eq, etc made it VERY useful.
@grantb5: I’m not sure about his particular situation. He goes wherever to client sites and often needs to make long phone calls while there. Would he haul the CaptionCall around everywhere and plug it in? Maybe.