My father has been losing his hearing and has been trying out different hearing aids and mics (resound I think) connected together via his iPhone. Sadly it’s not enough and he is slowly beeing shut out of his own life. It breaks my heart to see it!
I was thinking he might benefit from using a shotgun Mic or a parabolic mic and thus better focus on whoever is speaking across the table.
I wanted to ask you guys and girls if you had a suggestion for a discrete directional microphone? Or an alternate solution? The goal is to help him isolate the sounds he wants to hear. Maybe have it handheld and probably as small as is functional.
Hopefully others will chime in. Assuming he’s got Resound made for iPhone hearing aids, I’d start out with the Resound MultiMic. If that doesn’t work for understanding somebody in a quiet setting, I’d wonder why. Next step up would be getting a Roger Receiver to plug into the MultiMic and getting a Roger Pen. This next step is expensive and I’m not sure it would do that much better than the MultiMic alone in simple situations.
There is a ReSound user who is a resident M.D., has profound hearing loss, and has gotten remote microphones designed to work with HA’s. For him at his relatively young age, hearing well is important enough that he has almost spared no expense. He has FOUR Phonak Roger Pens that he hangs on different individuals in the OR. The input from the mics is broadcast to a Roger Receiver plugged into his ReSound Multi-Mic, I believe. The ReSound Multi-Mic thus streams the sound to his HA’s and he says it works great.
The thing about the Roger Pen/Receiver combination is that amongst the four mics, the active input is automatically switched to the person speaking. The ReSound Multi-Mics, according to the good Dr., cannot do this, but he still needs the Multi-Mic as a transducer in the pathway to relay the sound of speech to the ReSound Quattro’s he wears. This is a very expensive solution as Phonak accessories at retail prices are VERY EXPENSIVE, something like ~$700 per Roger pen, not to mention the receiver. I vaguely gather that Roger Receivers come with different inherent gain capabilities so you might need a specific Roger Receiver model tuned to the gain that your Dad needs for his HA’s if you went this route. Folks who have done this try to buy the equipment needed more cheaply on eBay but you could have warranty problems there, depending on exactly what you are sold.
@efigalaxie is an expert on all this stuff but unfortunately we haven’t heard too much from him lately. Besides focusandearnit, efigalaxie would be a great source of information if he has the time to provide the info.
can reply more this weekend but did get an email alerting me of the thread so will reply. Yes the pens are a very expensive set up BUT they are around $150 a piece on eBay. Don’t need an audiologist to set them up or program - follow user friendly instructions to pair. It’s honestly an incredibly powerful solution.
If he only needs one mic and is on resound, the multi mic is the way to go. Roger pens are industry standard/best, but like Jim said need multi mic to tap into it, and a Roger X 03 receiver that plugs into the multi mic. But once you have that, you can then add up to 8 or so mic’s all working in tandem.
EDIT: in the mean time, can he try out live listen on his iPhone? once live listen is on, turn up the iPhone system volume (buttons on the side will do this) and put the phone near who is speaking - see how this helps him and let us know.
I stopped going to coffee shop discussions/meetings because I couldn’t hear others in a group setting with my hearing aids.
In desperation I tried several remote microphones.
The best one (for me) is the Bellman Mino.
Depending on the degree of background noise I use the omni microphone or the selectable directional microphone.
In exceptionally bad(noisy) cases I use the remote microphone.
Its anything but discreet so that may prohibit its use for anyone that is self conscious.
But it allows me to have a social life.
And it’s cheap.
The device, earphones and a separate remote microphone run about $300 total from Amazon.
Tutorials on setting it up(simple) are available on youtube(just type Bellman Mino tutorial in the search bar)
Its worked well for me for the past 2 years.
Hi focusandearnit,
Thank you very much for your response!
He uses Live listen on his iPhone and I believe he has the resound multi mic (might be the micro not certain).
When live listen is active he often moves the phone closer to the speaker even though it is quire near already, or asks them to hold the phone and speak into it (as he does with the resound mic). I would say it’s probably a help but not enough.
Hi thaidan,
Thanks for your response!
I’ll check it out. Discretion is getting less and less important. Are the corded headphones in this system used then instead of the HA?
Hi MDB,
Thanks for responding!
In simple situations with me in a quiet-ish setting the multimic works I would say.
Ok, I’ve gotten the tips to add the Roger pen from other users as well. Is this the go to solution for complex environments? My whole shotgun Mic idea didn’t generate much response
I use the Bellman earphones with the Mino.
I stopped wearing my hearing aids almost 2 years ago.
I tried using the hearing aids with the T coil feature but I could never get it to work.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for responding and for the link!
I’ll check it out. My father is actually also an MD but retired so now it’s mostly important in his, social life and as I understand is the norm here: with his wife.
Price is not necessarily an issue but he keeps losing his stuff so it might be an issue that way.
I don’t have an audio background and had never heard of a shotgun mic. Looked it up. The Roger Pen (in my understanding) kind of like a shotgun mic (in that it’s very directional), but also gives an omnidirectional option. If you want to try the shotgun mic approach, it would just be figuring out a way to connect it. I think any of them would be reasonable to try, but it doesn’t look like any of them are “cheap.” I’d try the Roger Pen first.
If you shared your father’s audiogram and word recognition scores, it might help some of the more expert folks on the forum (not me! - I still have a lot to learn) judge whether his problem might be that his hearing loss is just so profound and his word recognition too low to be helped a great deal by HA’s. Has his hearing been tested recently (you say he has been trying out different HA’s). Has the audiologist done Real Ear Measurements to confirm the fit? Do you know what the audiologist has said about your father’s loss (most audiologists welcome family members because they can give another account of how the patient is doing - I took my wife to my initial interview with my audiologist just for that reason).
