Beyond that I have very little experience of them.
I visit the theatre a lot: ~50 West End visits in 2025, plus several regional venues. It's amazing how many times I've had to abandon the hearing assistance system because it doesn't work well... too quiet, distorted, delayed, poor balance between voices and instruments. Sometimes it just isn't functional at all, and nobody's noticed.
While I'm on the subject: saying "it's a loud show, you'll be able to hear fine" is a bit like telling someone who's short-sighted but has no glasses that "it's a bright show, you'll be able to see". It's not just about volume, but clarity and understanding.
I've had Phonak bilateral hearing aids for 5 years, and Starkey unilateral for ~5 years before that. None of those have supported induction loops.
That few support it implies that there are likely going to be implementation/interoperability bugs for a few more years at least - nobody knows how bad these will be. Maybe things will just work, but growing pains should not be a surprise.
They claim latencies as low as 40ms - this is unacceptably long for a lot of music applications. For listening to the sermon at church good enough, but people may noticed if you are singing along. I'm not sure if this will be an issue, but it is something to consider. You might need a different system though.
If you're ever considering installing one of these systems, please think again. Or at least trial it with a real situation, so you know what the experience will be like for the users.
"Yes, we have T-coils, but the person responsible for it isn't here right now, and no one here knows how to use it."
So, still quite a few limited factors to their actual usefulness in society unfortunately.
When I do sound at church, I always wish they would complain more. I assumed it was working, but one day found that the power cable for the loop system was not connected. I plugged it back in, and spoke to a hearing aid user about it and they said it hadn't been working for weeks. Why they (or all the other hearing aid users) hadn't mentioned it before I don't know...
411, "Loop systems" are hard-coded in the US's ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) so they are not going away anytime soon. When Auracast does proliferate it'll be alongside loop systems; not a direct replacement. (Not at least until the law is amended and we all know how long that takes.)
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My HA model is the Starkey Omega 24 RIC-RT (the `mRIC` is the smaller version of the same, sans T-coil).
Edit: I honestly don't know how I will function when I get older because I'm likely to be alone and blind from ARMD.
In headphones there is tiny coil.
It really work and very reliable, but result coil (size of room) have very large reactive resistance, so it is nearly impossible to transfer even high frequencies, only low (bass) and medium, so it workable for speech but music is heavily distorted.
It doesn't generate hi-fi sound, but speech is remarkably clear. Great for magic tricks. Or cheating at exams I suppose.
I bought it maybe 15 years ago on eBay, so it's nothing new.
It was meant to be part of a roulette wheel prediction computer that never came to full fruition.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/a-diy-audio-induction-loop-for-the...
Auracast looks like the future of this, so make sure anything new you get supports that. Those so few systems support it don't expect much of it - you should demand this to ensure the manufactures know there is demand, long term it is better for everyone to use one standard.
evolve2k•4d ago
Curious around the technology and value of Audio Induction Loops.
Would love to hear anyone’s experiences, insights and thoughts on the tech.
One of those niche technologies that you don’t use, unless you do use it.
hhdave•19h ago
We have several people who depend on it, including the church organist, so we soon hear if it's not working. He says it's working really well.
My Grandmother says the one in her church (which is nearby) doesn't work well at all and she usually doesn't hear much. I'm not sure why. She also finds the one in our church good, so I think they must have some problem.
I would think it could be worth contacting someone in charge of the venue(s) if it's somewhere you go regularly. I would imagine it heavily depends on how the whole thing is set up though - quality of microphones etc. We have lectern mics, singer mic, lapel mics for priest and a wide field mic. on the altar, so pretty good coverage, and they all go into an auto switcher thingy. I think it would need to be set up by someone who at least half knows what they're doing.
quercusa•16h ago
Finding someone like that is hard for many churches.
onewheeltom•14h ago