Questions about the Signia Pure 312 Nx 7 and StreamLine mic, PC and cell phone use, for a quadriplegic

Hearing Aids
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#1

Hi everybody, new member here! I’m a quadriplegic with moderate hearing loss due to Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy , (which has nothing to do with sharks or teeth, it’s a peripheral nerve disease). The cell phone revolution has passed me by until now, both because I couldn’t hear one with my cheap hearing aids and because I couldn’t lift it up or operate it anyway. But now I find it necessary to get one as I’m about to start school again, and my audiologist has recommended the Signia Pure 312 Nx and mic.

However, I’ve been working with Vocational Rehabilitation for the funding, and as you may know they want to know for sure that you’ll be able to use the equipment they pay for in order to perform the functions of the job you’re training for. In my case, that means I’ll have to prove that I’ll be able to enter text into the computer while talking on the telephone. For someone with limited hearing who can’t move their arms or hands, that’s a bit like asking me to juggle while walking backwards on a giant ball, but I think we have the “entering text” part covered, with a combination of voice recognition and eye tracking.

Which leaves the “talking on the telephone” part, which I still have questions about. For example, the StreamLine mic page says you can have your phone conversations hands-free. But what most people mean by “hands-free” is “first you press this button, then you can talk”, which is not exactly completely hands-free. Would anyone here know whether I would have to press a button? Or are there alternate ways of answering the phone, like automatic answering or a voice command to the phone?

Another possibility is me using Skype on my computer so that I can use eye tracking to click the mute button, put the focus on a word processing program, and then use voice recognition to enter text. But when I asked customer service whether the hearing aids could pick up the audio from Skype on the computer, I got back an answer about streaming audio from the TV. Trying again…

Anyway, if this pair isn’t going to work for me in terms of answering the phone hands-free, or use with Skype audio, I would appreciate the forum’s assistance in identifying a model that will. Many thanks!

Michelle

#2

If you are using an Android cell phone you can enable auto-answer and that will answer the call if you have a headset attached, which the Streamline Mic is, or it looks like a headset to the phone. I just verified with mine that it works that way. So that’s one option. You could also make calls from an Android tablet using Google Hangouts. I haven’t actually done that so I don’t know if that would be easier or harder for you.

You asked about the buttons on the Streamline Mic. There is one multi-purpose button and two volume up/down buttons that also change programs with a long press. The buttons are pretty small and are on the side of the device.

The previous Signia device (Easy-Tek I think) actually has a large multipurpose button on the front. It also has a 3.55mm jack for plugging into other devices. It does not work on the Nx line, just the Bx line (previous generation).

I’m not sure the Streamline Mic will work for you because of the size and location of the buttons. You can auto-answer the calls but if you have to operate the buttons I think they may be too small.

#3

Thanks for your answer, Don. It looks like the iPhone has a similar auto answer feature, so it should probably work the same way on that. But another question that has come up: even though the Signia page for the LiveStream mic says it can stream audio from “phone, tablet, and PC”, Signia customer service is insisting that I need the LiveStream TV instead in order to stream audio from my PC instead. Can anyone with experience with this product confirm or deny that?

#4

I use my Rexton version of the Streamline Mic to stream from a couple of laptops and a generic Bluetooth transmitter. I don’t see why it would not stream from any Bluetooth device. The TV device would stream from devices that do not have bluetooth. The TV streamer works very well but you could accomplish about the same thing with a generic Bluetooth transmitter.

The TV streamer would have a wired connection to the device producing the sound. The Streamline Mic would have a wireless Bluetooth connection to the device producing the sound.

1 Like
#5

Don is right. You can spend several hundred or get a BT transmitter for less than $50.