ReSound Multi-Mic Review (Ongoing)

I got a ReSound Multi-Mic and wanted to do a review of it as I use it. The corona virus situation has changed much of daily life, so this will be an ongoing thread. I asked many questions in other threads and got some good answers, however my use case is slightly different than many others. Below is a little overview of where I started with this quest and why I did order the Multi-Mic from Amazon (blame Dr. Cliff). Costco is a better deal and returns, but they will not order with the Hearing Centers shut down. The Amazon Canadian seller does not accept returns, so I will use it and adapt.

I am now in need of primarily one person communication in the back seat of ride share as I go to medical appointments. Have a couple temporary medical issues that has me seeing many specialists, and my insurance provide free rides, since I have no car, it is wonderful. I just have a few intense weeks of many medical appointment and thank goodness for my insurance covering rides they book via Lyft or Uber. Again, I have no car, no family, and only a few older friends have time or ability to give me rides.

I just find it hard to hear the driver as they face forward. I have tried setting my ReSound Costco hearing aids in many programs and changing features, but still tough. So my thought was the Multi in table mode in my hand on my lap or hanging on to the seat belt at my chest or over door grab handle that I hang on to stabilize my neck injury? Does the Multi support narrowing focus by direction? Holding it at back seat passenger side and aim at front seat driver side?

In the future the table mic feature might be nice, when my senior apartment floor neighbors and I can have our bi-weekly evening dinners and discussions. This is not my primary need and I do not go to noisy places with groups except our residence town hall meetings when they resume. Those are in a large room with 60-100 people and an old PA system.

I just thought of Dr. Cliff to see if he has a Resound Multi Mic video and he does! My searches never brought it up. I just ordered one from Amazon after watching this.

I imagine that the Multi Mic uses a cardiod microphone pattern to restrict its pickup range and there is only so much that a driver can turn his head - and if he does too much while moving, he/she is risking an accident to talk to you.

I would think that getting a covering and a way of propping the microphone up somewhere in the front of the car would work a lot better if the driver cannot wear the microphone. Just as EarGear is used over HA bodies to protect them from sweat, etc., I would think that a gauzy covering would greatly reduce the amount of direct contamination that might reach the device itself but still let sound through. With the coronavirus, you are not going to permanently contaminate your device but after some period of days or weeks sitting it will decontaminate itself by the virus dying. So with the proper safety precautions, if your only use of the device is to communicate with your driver, I think you could afford to let the device get possibly mildly contaminated in use to a certain degree, then bag it when not in use, etc., and count on the virus dying off over time. The retail version of the device comes with its own charger, I think, so you could afford to let that get contaminated, too, a bit, I think. There are collapsible selfie sticks, too. What if you mounted the device on the end of a selfie stick and just extended it into the front seat over the right backside of the front passenger’s seat so that the microphone would essentially be listening to the driver somewhere up around the front passenger’s seat or the right front glove box - or if the driver were really understanding, maybe you could extend the selfie stick up along the center console, angled to point up towards the driver’s mouth. The device is capable of great directionality when it is used at about a 45 degree angle and when it is within several feet of the speaker, even if not worn by the speaker, in my own experience. Since now a lot of people are wearing masks and gloves, presumably, you’d be able to wear the same in public and protect yourself by covering the device with a sound permeable covering. Since the device isn’t breathing like a person wearing a mask, if you treat the device as if it were contaminated, always handle it with mask and gloves, bag it when not in use, and wash or dispose of the microphone covering, I’d think you’ve have more chance of catching the virus directly from someone (unless you’re always wearing an N95 mask and never touching your face) than you would from a carefully handled covered microphone. I’ve worked with screaming amounts of radioactivity both as a scientist and a health physicist and I know from using a Geiger counter and also from using surface swabs that with good technique you can just about eliminate contamination of anything but the outside of your PPE.

The other thing that you might try is suggesting to Uber or Lyft or whoever is providing your rides that it would be great if they could come up with a solution. It’s too bad there is not something like Google speech-to-text between phones, a driver speaks to his phone, a speech-to-text app broadcasts the result to your phone. But with all the people trying to help in various ways, maybe there is a techie somewhere out there who could come up with a solution - maybe it’s worth letting Google, Apple, Microsoft know that there is a need because of social distancing and hearing difficulty that needs to be solved?

I learned long ago, though, that it’s easy to have “bright” ideas but only actualizing them counts. Sorry for offering a bunch of “bright” ideas without much hope that any might actually work.

Edit_Update: Another suggestion would be to find a good source of noise like a noisy fan, a hair dryer, or whatever, find a friend or staff member in your community center who’s willing to help out, and set up a driving simulation with chairs with as much noise as you want going in the background, around you, around the helper, etc., and find out what the conditions are in which the Multi Mic can actually help out - how far it has to be from the speaker, at what vertical angle, how much to the side, if at all it can be. With myself, my wife and I virtually stood at opposite ends of our kitchen Jenn Air stovetop and I turned on the very noisy Jenn Air exhaust fan with the Multi Mic held at about my waist level pointing up directly at her mouth at about a 45 deg angle. I could easily hear her speak over the faint roar of the fan.

The other thing is that I’m wearing occlusive molds. So I can turn off my external mics and reduce surrounding noise leaking into my ear drums by at least 10 to 15 dB. You have excellent low-frequency hearing up to about 2K. I would imagine most road noise is down in the low-frequency range. You could probably improve your signal-to-noise ratio greatly by switching to occlusive molds if just for your rides to the doctor or other care that you need. I guess with the pandemic, it’s going to be impossible to get molds any time soon but at least that’s something to consider for the future.

@jim_lewis said:

there is only so much that a driver can turn his head - and if he does too much while moving, he/she is risking an accident to talk to you.

Just enough to make eye contact in the rear view mirror. That helped considerably,

I’ve sat on my daughter’s front porch in Austin, TX, and listened to her, a grandkid, and my wife all talking in the omnidirectional mode with low background noise and thought the conversation was very clear, even better than with my external HA mics turned on. In an earlier thread where you first mentioned that you were going to get the Multi Mic, I invited @efigalaxie and @focusandearnit to comment on their experiences using the Multi Mic. They both switched to Roger devices using the FM reception on the Multi Mic to relay sound to their HA’s. But since they’ve worked in a steel mill and a hospital setting, including operating rooms with folks speaking softly and noisy machines, they might provide excellent commentary on dealing with speech in noise using remote assistance devices. Maybe at this point it would be worth the expense to get an FM receiver and a used Roger pen on eBay? I do think practicing using the Multi Mic or whatever other device you can afford to go with in your residence community would help you perfect the usage when it matters most, when you are out and about for a medical appointment (and I’m getting the forum warning that I am posting too much in this thread and should give others a chance to join it …)