Cheaper alternatives to Roger?

I am hopefully waiting for Apple to add the Mic Mode controls to the Live Listening feature because I can then trial the Voice Isolation setting. This is apparently very good at filtering out voices from a noisy background.

I’m a big fan of the Roger On, which many people consider to be the best (and most expensive…) remote mic. For me it’s been a godsend. Although it cost me $1200, my Kaiser Permanente plan saved me $1000 on my new aid, and after 50 years of having a BiCros, I was able to do without a transmitter on my deaf ear, so the economics worked out well.

One alternative that I’ve seen that people have liked are the Widex Sound Assist21. It uses Bluetooth to conect to a telecoil, so I assume it can also be used with any non-Widex brand that has a t-coil. I don’t know the price, and I assume that there’s a delay because of the Bluetooth transmission.

I also think the AudioTellligence Orsana33, which is still in development, looks good. It uses a new, faster Bluetooth version and will hopefully solve the problem with Bluetooth delay. No word yet on when it will come out, or the price, but it should work with any aid that supports its newer Bluetooth version,

I corresponded with AudioTelligence. The Orsana will not immediately be available to end users. They will be working with other manufacturers to make customized versions of the Orsana, which I assume will be available from HA manufacturers and other hearing-related businesses.

Hopefully there will one gadget suitable for profound hearing loss. The gadget will selectively transmit the voice to our hearing aids in a noisy environments.

@SlowNSteady Many thanks for the confirmation it is really appreciated

Am I the only one that has had big problems with the PartnerMic?

Great concept, and when it worked, it was terrific. But I’m on my third one, the warranty has expired, and it’s completely useless.

First one: battery life was terrible, about 30 minutes. Replaced under warranty.

Second one: better battery life to start, but degenerated quickly to about 30 minutes.

Third one: I don’t even know about battery life anymore, because this thing can’t be turned off manually. The only way to turn it off is to plug it in. I’ve had this one for maybe two months.

I haven’t decided if I should do battle with Costco, since they’ve already replaced it twice and it’s been over a year. I paid $350 Canadian for this, which might be cheap compared to a Roger, but it’s been almost unusable from day one. It can’t be just me!

It’s exactly like the one in the picture.

I’ve lost track of the exchange rate, but you can probably get a used Roger On on ebay for less than what you paid for the PartnerMic. Some members here often sell them, too.

There is a Roger Pen IN, with two receivers, for $499 on ebay. Have no idea if it is legit.

@glucas said:

when using a telecoil you would require a neckloop called MyLink which is a Type 03 receiver that costs about $150

Just got a MyLink and my HAs have coil in them. Do I need any other equipment to use the MyLink? How do I set that up? How does it work?

Not sure what you are asking, but my understanding is the mylink would connect to whatever the sound source is, but lets say it is a Roger On. The mylink would then transmit the incoming sound to the hearing aids. The hearing aids would have to have a tcoil program and you would change to the tcoil program when you are ready for sound.

Yes You will need the Roger Select and it will need to be switched on. You will need to switch to telecoil and turn your MyLink on.

Hello Ian, Wiggy 90. You say that you bought a Bluetooth device, but it would not connect to your phone hearing aids. I have just had a similar experience, but resolved it. I got a UGreen Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.2 transmitter and receiver (£32 Amazon) thinking that I could plug it in to 3.5 mm headphone jacks and stream the sound to my Phonak Audeo HAs. It showed as paired OK on my phone app, but failed to deliver any sound. I tried all the usual resetting and repairing, but to no avail. I don’t think that the device was faulty because it paired okay to my wife’s AirPods and she got sound no problem.

I returned them as incompatible for my needs, and ordered up instead the Avantree Relay which runs on 5.3, and is transmitter only (£37). It was a lot easier to operate. More buttons so not having to guess the lights. That worked crystal clear with my HAs. However, I have returned them because all these devices have a range of just 10 metres, whereas the Roger On In that I have on trial at a horrendous nearly £1700 has a 25m range, and I need that for my work.

To be clear, using the supplied 3.5 TRS to USB cable (an ordinary one does not work), I can plug into the sound output from any 3.5 mm headphone jack, and stream to my HAs no problem. I can also use my Phonak Partnermic concurrently – that is to say, not both together, but selecting either one or the other on the app.

Now, the only practical use that I’m finding for the Roger On In V2 Is the way of connecting from a headphone outlet to my HAs. Why am I not using it for all the other possibilities – pointing, table mode, et cetera? Because I find the sound quality appalling. I cannot understand all the refuse to say how good it is. Whoever is plugging into a 3.5 mm jack on a computer or other device gives great sound, anything that comes through the microphones I find to be wispy, roomy, and painful to listen to. I’m going to ask my audiologist if the newly released version three might be better, or if there could be a fault in mine, but I have seen other reviews on this forum describing similar experience. I find that a noisy condition is the Phone neck hearing aids give remarkable clarity when used in restaurant mode, and that the Roger is a waste of time.

I have one other game changing discovery to share, and it also involves using the Roger to plug into a 3.5 mm jack. I do a lot of public speaking, including panel events. With my previous ReSound system, I could run up to 3 microphones and currently clipped to other speakers. The only way it seems that I could get that with a Phonak system Is it in tandem with the Roger, and with the clip on microphones that come in at about £250 each on eBay. What a rip-off! They’ve only special virtue would seem to be that they automatically select one speaker at a time instead of having all at open Mike status. That, however, could be a problem when more than one person is speaking over another. So, is there any solution?

The solution I found was to use a pair of Rode Go Microphones with the receiver plugged into my Roger using it special little cable. However, these are a very expensive microphone, and you only get two, which I normally use for blended zoom meetings. I searched around on Amazon, and lo and behold, find that a company called BOYA do a four microphone With receiver system that is currently available at just £128 (normally almost £200). I connect the receiver to my Roger with the cable and then have anything between one and four microphones simultaneously into my hearing aids. While the reviewers Concede that it is not top-notch studio quality, the quality is as good as perfect as far as I can hear, and the lavaliar microphones each way only 12 g which is even less than what the ReSound ones weed. Fantastic! This means that on a panel, I can connect up to 4 people for less than £30 each, indeed, I could effectively add a fifth because it is possible to set the Roger Also to operate the microphone well at the same time picking up from the receiver via the cable. I would add that often at event I will tape one of my hearing aid microphones to the roving Mike to make it easy to hear the audience.

To summarise, what I have reviewed here it’s to suggest that my Phonak Audeo L90-312 aids can receive Bluetooth streaming at least with the relay device that I described, and also, that several microphones could be connected simultaneously using a device such as the Boya, and there were many others on the market.

One last point that the astute reader might be pondering over: Why not do away with the hideously expensive large altogether, and just plug my Boya receiver into the Avantree for streaming at a fraction of the price? I’ve not tried it, but I think it would just require a simple TRS male to TRS female Headphone adapter for the connection. The reason is my public speaking needs. Often I will plug a transmitter (or when I had the ReSound system, the multi Mike) into the headphone outlet of a venue main sound system. This is normally up the back of the hall. As such, the 10 m of a Bluetooth transmission relay system Would not be sufficient, where the Roger’s 25 m is good, And I’ve just realised that when I tested it outside the other day, I had the extended range option that can be turned on in the Roger app switch switched off, so it may be possible to get more than 25 m with a clear line of sight.

My apologies for spelling mistakes, et cetera, I’ve dictated this late at night, but hope it might be useful to others and that nothing I have said resulting for my experiments over the past several days is misleading or incorrect.

It would be nice if you could show some pictures of the different types of connectors that is workable for your HA’s. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Many Thanks…

I no longer have the Bluetooth streaming devices, Dankailio. You can search for them on Amazon UK to see pictures. But here is the Boya with the 3.5 mm headphone jack male end plugged into the reciever, and the USB end plugged into the Roger On In for transmission of between 1 and 4 of the Boya microphones into the hearing aids, and controllable for ambience in the Phonak app.

One of the screenshots shows how it looks in the Phonak app with the ambiance slider opej, and the other shows that within the separate Roger app (why don’t Phonak integrate these!?) it goes into Audio mode. In studio mode, a long press on the button will open or close the Roger’s own microphone, which is what I mean about this setup offering potentially 5 microphones in use at one time. On each of the Boya transmitter miles there’s a wee button that can mute, or increase/reduce the gain.

Note the Phonak ParnerMic for size comparison, and note that I don’t use the cumbersome neck loops. I make my own with cord glued in to magnetic closure clips available cheaply from online jewellery-making supply outlets.

One note of caution. I am an old hand with ReSound microphones, but still very new to Phonak and the Boya setup. I have not yet trialled in potentially complex live situations. Don’t take my word as gospel. I just share this for the sake of holding spaces of community, which is what my wider work is about.