Read Below About the Benefits of A Wide Area Auditorium FM System For Persons with Hearing Loss

A Wide-Area System is composed of an FM transmitter which is used to take a normal volume signal from a person speaking in a large room, such as a church or auditorium, and send it by radio signal to the ear of a person who is hard-of-hearing, who wears an FM receiver. It operates at a distance of 300 to 500 ft., is portable, can be taken from room to room, and can be used outside provided an electrical plug is available. The number of FM receivers purchased dictates the number of persons who can use the system at any given time. The receivers operate on AA batteries; either disposable or rechargeable batteries can be used.

Persons who are hard-of-hearing who want to attend activities held in large rooms, who cannot hear the activities with their own personal hearing aids.

Personal hearing aids are designed to improve communication between people who are not more than 14 to 16 ft. apart, who are communicating in a relatively nose-controlled environment, with ceilings no higher than about 10 ft., and a total room size of not more than 15 x 15 ft.

As the room size exceeds 15 x 15 ft., as the ceiling height exceeds 10 ft., and the distance between the speaker and the listener exceeds 15 ft., the following consonant sounds become indistinguishable from one another: f, s, v, z, t, k, th, p. They are either confused with one another or not heard at all.

So the following sentence:

"The bus trip to Jacobs Field will be Friday, September 5, 1998 at 11:30 A.M."

sounds like:

"e bu ri oo Jacobs ield will be riday, ember _, 199a a 11:ery A.M.."

The key to better hearing in large rooms is bringing back the lost consonants. This is totally dependant on reducing the distance between the speaker’s lips and the listener’s ear. A hearing aid cannot control these distances.

The FM system completely eliminates the entire distance between the speaker and the listener. If the speaker is 3 inches from the FM microphone, the listener receives the speaker’s voice through the FM receiver as though he/she was only three inches away from the speaker.

This restores the consonants, eliminates background room noise which affects most hearing aids, and provides a very high fidelity/good quality sound to the ear of the heard-of-hearing person wearing the FM receiver.

The speaker talks into the FM microphone, the same as speaking into any PA microphone. It is usually a lapel microphone with the FM system.

The person with the hearing loss, the listener, wears in a pocket an FM receiver which has a cord and headphone like a Walkman radio. The listener can sit anywhere in the room within 300 to 500 ft. from the speaker.

If a particular resident wants full power from the FM system, he/she can private-pay to order a custom fitting earmold to an FM unit. This includes a custom standard earmold, a button receiver and a cord. Using the FM system in this way provides the optimum listening experience for exceptionally hard-of-hearing persons.

If you are interested in purchasing one of these Wide Area FM systems, please see our Products Section for more information.