Using the T-coil

I have Phonak P90 with telecoil and I even bought a domestic telecoil system to connect the TV in the living room.

It was useful for a while, but nowadays TVs, music systems and computers come with Bluetooth so once I bought a new TV it wasn’t so necessary anymore. On the other hand, the audio bandwidth is much lower with telecoil, the volume depends on your head orientation and I hear the 50 Hz and harmonics interference from the electric network, so I don’t use it any longer. It’s still great if you don’t have Bluetooth or Auracast, but it’s no wonder that’s being phased out.

The TV Connector is the solution. Watching video using “classic” Bluetooth can introduce lag ie. lip-sync. Apparently not with Auracast or Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE). But the newer Phonaks use “classic” Bluetooth. Bluetooth is great for audio though ie. phone, where lag doesn’t matter.

Head orientation is a thing. But with a personal loop you could also adjust the “plane” of the loop so that you don’t have to tip your head out of the ordinary to find the sweet spot.

I think the purpose of the loop/coil was as an aid to the hearing impaired to be able to hear speech. It wasn’t intended for music. Speech is the prime directive of hearing aids whether loop/coil, Bluetooth, BTLE, Auracast.

Very nice! If you ask at the desk for their assistive listening device, most often it will be a little brick that comes with a t-coil or headphones. I bring my own little bluetooth adapter for $70 aud and I can plug that in and stream it to my L90’s.

I just have to make sure I completely mute the surrounding (background) noise otherwise I’ll have cross talk from the delay in audio from the background speakers + HA system. While it cuts out any live reaction and gossips with my cinema buddies, I still have the immersion of the low frequency bass though!

I have always had aids with this property, the problem is I have not found a single venue that has a loop, no university classrooms, no movie theater, no play theater! I live in Colorado in the Boulder area.

For my old TV device I had an TV-Connector. This TV-Connector also worked fantastically with my hifi-unit and with an old radio connected to where headphones are normally plugged in.

You are completely right with what you say about the use of the telecoil at home. Bluetooth is much better. No discussion about. But what you do when you go to watch a movie in a cinema or an opera, etc. There it is still very useful to have the function of a telecoil, because those places normally do not transmit sound via bluetooth. And if they do, how you get it connected to your hearing aids? The transmission of sound via telecoil is automatically connected by choosing this function at your app on your smartphone.

As I said it many times already: Bluetooth is a lot better than reveiving sound via a t-coil. But the t-coil is still a great option for cinemas, theatres, operas, churches, etc.. At home I don’t use the t-coil function of my hearing aids any more. I just use bluetooth only. But on these public places the t-coil function is still a great option.

Obviously t-coil option is much less supported in the U.S., than in Europe!

@Marc1975 said:

But tell me how you get this LEA Auracast to work in a cinema

The cinema uses a Bluetooth transmitter to broadcast the movie soundtrack as an Auracast stream. You use an app on your phone to get a list of available Auracast streams within range and select the one that you want. The app then sends the parameters of that stream to your hearing aids and they use that information to take the broadcast.

Around me (SE Wisconsin), theaters do not normally have loops for telecoil either. They generally have a system that uses IR transmitters and receivers.

Yes, I think so! I havn’t heard about it over here until now!

I must definitely find out more about this option of using Auracast. I think where I live (Austria), there are still no places which offer an Auracast stream!

It does look very promising. But the aids have to support it and it’s the same problem of finding a venue that chose to install it. Whereas aids have had telecoils in them for decades. Still the same venue problem.

It seems that even younger people with normal hearing struggle to follow dialogue in movies, with a large proportion of them relying on subtitles (quote below). My prediction is that when movie (and stage) theaters finally install Auracast many normal-hearing people will begin to wear compatible earbuds there as well, generating a positive supply-consumer feedback loop that also benefits HA wearers…

“…4 in 10 adults under 45 use subtitles at least “often” when watching TV or movies, compared with about 3 in 10 adults older than 45.”