Hear in Noise? You Bet You Can! Here's How
Editor: You think it's impossible to hear when there's background
noise present? Well, Neil Bauman thinks differently, and he's here to
tell you all about it. Yes, this is the same Neil Bauman who wrote the
definitive book on ototoxic drugs. You can learn more about Neil, his
book, and his many excellent pamphlets on his website: www.hearinglosshelp.com
Here's Neil!
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(c) September 2003 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
Question: Hearing aids don't work well for me, particularly in noisy
places such as while driving in the car or talking in noisy restaurants.
Being unable to communicate freely, especially on long car trips, really
spoils our vacations and times together. What can I do in order to hear
my wife under such conditions?-F. A.
Answer: I know exactly what you mean. I totally sympathize with you
since in the past I too have struggled to hear under exactly these
conditions.
The good news is that you don't have to struggle any longer. There
are a number of solutions to these and other difficult listening
situations. You just have to find the solution that works best for you.
Let me share how almost all the time I effortlessly hear my wife under
these same conditions. I think my solution will work great for you too!
Why Hearing Aids Are Not Enough
Too often, people think that getting and wearing hearing aids is the
solution to all their communications problems. It is a decided shock to
them to find out that this is just not so, as you have discovered.
Hearing aids work best in quiet places when the person you are
talking to is just 3 to 6 feet from you. This is the ideal situation.
However, much of our communication takes place under far less than ideal
conditions. The environment is often noisy and people talk to us from
greater than the optimal 6 feet or less.
When you are talking to your wife in the car or in a restaurant,
distance isn't really the major problem, although it certainly plays a
part. The real culprit is the background noise.
This is because when we lose some of our hearing, we also lose, to a
large extent, our ability to pick out the voice we want to hear from the
background noise around us, unless the voice we want to hear is
substantially louder than the noise. Wearing hearing aids generally
doesn't help us in these situations because hearing aids amplify the
background noise along with the voice we want to hear.
What we really need is to make the voice louder and, at the same
time, make the background noise softer, so the voice we want to hear
stands out from the noise. The fancy term for this is increasing the
signal (speech)-to-noise ratio.
In order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio when the background
noise goes up, we somehow have to drastically reduce the distance
between the speaker's lips and our ears. We can't easily do this with
hearing aids alone. This is where Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs)
come in.
ALDs Are the Answer
The ideal solution would be to have your wife speak directly into
both of your ears at the same time (which, of course, is impossible).
This would make her voice seem ever so much louder than the background
sounds and thus would give you an excellent signal to noise ratio.
This is exactly what a properly-used ALD will do for you. You will
hear as though your wife were speaking directly into both your ears at
the same time-loud, clear and with little distracting background noise.
The reason ALDs are so effective is because, unlike hearing aids, you
position the ALD microphone close to the speaker's mouth. This makes the
person's voice much louder than the background racket. In contrast, with
hearing aids, the microphones are perched on your ears, not near the
speaker's mouth. As a result, they pick up all the background noise
along with the voice you want to hear and you are no better off than you
were before.
ALDs have another wonderful benefit. Because the microphone is so
close to the speaker, ALDs greatly reduce the distortion in speech you
experience while listening to someone from any significant distance.
With ALDs, the speech is so clear you'd swear the person is speaking
directly into your ears.
There are many possible solutions to the two situations you
mentioned. For example, you could get yourself fancy hearing aids with
noise canceling microphones. You might wear hearing aids with
directional microphones. You could even use hearing aids that have
Direct Audio Input (DAI) boots so you could just pin a lapel microphone
on your wife and plug it directly into your aids.
The problem with these solutions is that they tend to be very
expensive and don't necessarily work in all noisy situations. For
example, if you had directional microphones on your hearing aids and
your wife is riding with you in the car, your directional microphones
would be picking up car/road noise from straight in front of you, not
your wife's voice since she is sitting beside you. However, in a noisy
restaurant, if she were sitting across the table from you, the
directional microphones could be just the ticket!
The PockeTalker Pro
The solution that I personally love is using a small amplifier with a
microphone and earphones. The device I use is the PockeTalker Pro. Not
only does it give excellent results, it costs just a small fraction of
what fancy hearing aids cost, yet works great for me.
When my wife and I go out driving, I would normally have to take my
eyes off the road and look at her in order to speechread/understand her.
Not a great idea when I am the driver, especially in heavy traffic!
With the PockeTalker Pro, this is no longer a problem. Here's what I
do. Before we start, I clip my lapel microphone to the chest strap of my
wife's seatbelt, placing it as close to her mouth as possible. (I could
just as easily clip it to her sweater or blouse, but the seat belt is
more convenient in our car because of the kind of seat belts we have.)
I plug the microphone into the microphone jack on the top of the
PocketTalker. I also plug in my binaural earphones (earbuds actually)
and adjust the volume for comfort. That is all there is to it! Now I can
freely converse with my wife without any trouble.
This system is so sensitive that I only need the volume set on 1 (out
of 5). This means I have more than enough reserve power if I should ever
need it or if my hearing should get worse. (For the record, I have a
severe hearing loss. This gives you a good idea of how powerful and
sensitive this system really is.)
We do much the same thing in restaurants. My wife clips the
microphone to her sweater a bit to one side so the microphone cord
doesn't hang down into her dinner. The microphone cord is 6 feet long so
I can easily lay it to one side of the table-well out of the way.
(Actually, it is long enough to string under the table if I choose to do
that instead.) I put the earbuds into my ears and hear very well. Just
like in the car, background noise becomes almost non-existent so I do
not have to crank up the volume much.
Not only does the PockeTalker work great in noisy restaurants, it
also works great for intimate dinners where you don't want to be
overheard. With the PockeTalker I can hear my wife without her having to
shout "sweet nothings" at me (and to half the restaurant as
well!)
There are two secrets to using ALDs effectively. One is to use dual
earphones-one in each ear. This makes a tremendous difference since we
have less than perfect discrimination. With two earphones, our
understanding goes way up as compared to listening with just one.
An added bonus is that the earphones also cut out some of the
car/road/wind noise, but still allow me to hear some environmental
sounds.
I like to wear unobtrusive earbuds rather than wear headphones. This
is my choice. I find them much more comfortable.
The other secret to effective ALD use is to place the microphone as
close as you can to the lips of the person you want to hear. This allows
you to keep the volume down so the microphone won't pick up the more
distant background noise.
The PockeTalker is a flexible system. For example, if I wanted to, I
could wear my hearing aids, switch them to their telecoils and plug my
neckloop into the PockeTalker instead of using the earbuds and hear just
as well.
Unfortunately, in my experience, I find that a lot of places where I
want to use my telecoils also have a lot of electrical (technically
magnetic) interference. This interference can range from slightly
annoying to being so loud as to drown out the speaker! The good news is
that interference does not bother the PockeTalker Pro at all. As a
result, I can use it with confidence anywhere.
Another neat feature of the PockeTalker is that because it is a
"hard-wired" system, no one can listen in on your
conversations like they could if you were using an FM or loop system.
Cost and Availability
What does a system like this cost? The good news is that the whole
system I use lists for only $206.99-a miniscule 4-7% of the $3,000.00 to
$5,000.00 a pair of fancy hearing aids would cost me-and it works a
whole lot better in the situations I've described above.
The system I use includes the PockeTalker Pro (PKT PRO1-0/$164.50).
To this I add dual mono earbuds (EAR 014/$17.50) and a Tie Clip
microphone (Radio Shack part no. 33-3013/$24.99). If you already have
stereo earbuds/earphones that you want to use, you can do so. Instead of
buying the EAR 014 earbuds, you just need to get an in-line stereo to
mono converter (Radio Shack part no. 274-882/$3.99).
To learn more about the many features of the PockeTalker Pro, or to
order one for yourself and begin communicating with ease, click here
<PTPro.htm>. You do not have to put up with not hearing when the
noise builds up. With the right technology, you too, like me, can hear
better!
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Neil Bauman, Ph.D., has successfully coped with a life-long severe
hereditary hearing loss. He is a hearing loss coping skills specialist,
author and speaker. He directs the Center for Hearing Loss Help. Send
your questions to him at: neil@hearinglosshelp.com
or visit his website at: www.hearinglosshelp.com
