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Captioning live speech in work meetings - Roger Select and Phonak Roger NeckLoop?

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Hello,
With this Covid around, I am really struggling to understand people with masks. I never knew I was relying so much on the face expressions & lip reading!

Now, I am looking for a solution to have live captions of my colleagues speech during meetings. I am really afraid I will miss a lot of things because of the masks. I want to use the real-time transcription for complementing what I hear myself via the hearing aids.

I considered Android’s Live Transcribe, but I need to give the phone to the speaking colleague - for him/her to speak into the phone’s microphone and then stay near to read the phone’s screen. Doesn’t allow for the social distancing too much…

At home I can cope very well - I use the Chrome browser and I can see the live captions for the meetings (our conferencing application is running in the browser) - using Google Chrome’s “Live captions”7 - it works for any sound from the browser. The transcribed captions appear real-time so I can follow the speech and text in sync. It’s lovely.

But when at the office, I won’t be able to use that.
I have Phonak Bolero Venture aids.
I was thinking into investing in a:

  • Roger Select to put on the meeting table +
  • Roger NeckLoop to wear on myself.
    And then to connect the Roger NeckLoop to my laptop via USB and use Otter.io10 to transcribe (OR maybe try with my smartphone and Live Transcribe). I read this material about Roger NeckLoop and speech to text25.

Do you have experience with the NeckLoop?
Or maybe do you see any alternative solutions?
Any thoughts you have are really very much appreciated!

Thanks,
Mar

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Edited

I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to connect the Roger NeckLoop to your laptop, you’ll have to plug the Select in to your laptop and it’ll send sounds to the NeckLoop.

You’ll get better sound if you are able to use the Roger receivers attached to each Aid.

EDIT- you could just use a neckloop (not Roger) to use with your laptop. I paid £12 for one which I think is less then $20.

I know this is a UK site but It’ll give you ideas.

Neck loop (neckloop) or Personal Inductive Listening | Connevans15

Connevans

Edited

Hi, @Zebras, and thank you so much for your answer!

I actually live in the EU, so no problem about UK/US sites. The most important thing is to understand what I need to search for! :slight_smile:

About:

@Zebras said:

you’ll have to plug the Select in to your laptop and it’ll send sounds to the NeckLoop.

I am searching in the Roger Select User Guide, it seems to me that only direction supported is: send computer sound into Roger Select (to stream audio, youtube etc).
But I want the opposite direction, to send sounds picked by Roger Select from the room - into the computer, to caption them. Not sure how to find this feature, did you see it somewhere in the guide?

Phonak claims in this Youtube that NeckLoop can be connected to the computer to bring sounds into it, for captioning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZrwlWnPgK815
Summarizing the video:
Meeting conversation > Roger microphone (e.g. Roger Select) > Roger NeckLoop (then, connect RogerNeckloop via audio cable to) > Computer, where the cable connection from NeckLoop is regarded as a microphone; then in > Otter.io1 I can use that microphone as audio input - to have captions for it.

I try to find someone who already did that - and not sure where to look!

I am also an ignorant about . I read now from your link more about them. Not sure how to add them in my scenario, do you have any idea? (because the laptop is not the source, but the receiver of the sounds).

Many thanks,
Mar

This should work but there are a few little things to consider. Using the Roger Select in the center of a meeting table to capture voices will work well if people talk one at a time. Based on Phonak’s video, you can receive that audio to the neckloop and send that audio into your computer. I think plugging in the audio cable to the neckloop might disable the neckloop streaming to your hearing aids. You may not be able to do both with one neckloop so you should ask about that if you need both. Aside from that, computers are usually pretty good at noticing you plugged in an audio plug or USB and will ask you if you want it for “mic in” or “headphone out” so you would just choose “mic in” and it should work with Otter. It is more challenging to hardwire audio from a mic (or this neckloop) into a smartphone. First, you will probably need a USB to lightning to USB to USB-C adapter depending on your phone and sometimes the phone does not recognize that mic input and continues using its built-in mic. When you try to change it in settings, the mic option is grayed out, which can be confounding. You may need a device like an iRig2 in line to help.

Hello @sufhl and thank you so much for your answer, very helpful!

I suspect too that NeckLoop may not transmit anymore to my aids when I plug in the audio cable. In one place it was mentioned to “have a spare Neckloop/MyLink” for speech-to-text.

About iRig 2 - I did not know about it, thank you very much for mentioning! I checked it and it seems awesome, indeed I had no idea how to get the sound the smartphone. Now I have a trail to follow :slight_smile:

Now about people speaking in same time, I have no idea about what the result of speech-to-text would be, that’s something to definitely keep in mind. Especially because there is no “speaker identification”, you could not tell who said what.

Also, the new Marvels/Paradise Phonak aids connect directly to the Roger Select iN, as they have Roger Direct integrated. So no need for NeckLoop for example. So, in this situation, I wonder if a speech-to-text application will be available for “what the aids hear”… MyPhonak app now lets you adjust some volume via Bluetooth, so a similar application but feeding the audio inside the application via Bluetooth. :slight_smile:

Maybe that’s a long shot! But that would be really good for work or when interacting with people in the city… what do you think about it? :smiley:

Mar

Once Bluetooth is up and running, it’s touted that a Bluetooth transmitter will be able to transmit the same audio to more than one receiver simultaneously. So yes, one mic could send wireless audio to both hearing aids and a smartphone app running speech-to-text. That would be fantastic! For now, Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Classic transmit just between two devices only. Sometimes you can use a wired audio splitter as a workaround.

Thanks for the message, now I learned about another new thing :slight_smile: I did not know about Bluetooth and it seems awesome. I am reading now here a bit and that’s very promising: What’s the Difference Between Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth LE Audio?4. I hope in a few years we could have hearing aids with that.

That reminds me the Marvels aids have a limitation:
/ only one Bluetooth device connected at a time. /
So only the laptop OR only the phone can be connected (even if I can keep the two still paired to the aids, fortunately).

That means that now, while working at the computer, if the smartphone is ringing, I need to disconnect very fast the aids from computer’s Bluetooth and connect them to the mobile’s bluetooth. That needs blazing fast speed, which not sure who has, but definitely not me.

Do you happen to know a way to keep both devices connected with the aids, maybe with an intermediary Bluetooth device? Something like:
PC + smartphone (both connected to) => an intermediary Bluetooth device => (and the intermediary device is the one which is connecting to) the Hearing aids

I just googled a bit… I see these, but really not sure if this would be working or not for this scenario:
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Soundsync-Transmitter-Synchronization-Connection/dp/B07BR3FFTB/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=Multi-stream+Bluetooth+Transmitter&qid=1637751581&sr=8-85
Or maybe something more suited for the case exists?

Thanks :slight_smile:
Mar

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