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Upgrades for church sound system? Auracast? Anything else?

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In reply to @mystuart

@mystuart said:

loop

Here is an up-to-date list of all the hearing loops across the country17.

If a facility doesn’t have a , under the , they are required to have either an or infrared system. (places of worship are often exempt, but not always)

Also, a list of all hearing aids with , and telecoils with
“ADA-Access-Ready” Hearing Instruments List14

Just checked the entries for Berkeley on the ‘’ list. It’s definitely NOT complete, but that’s the way it goes. For ex., most public libraries have loops in their community room, although often it is not turned on when programs occur–you have to ask a staff member!!! And now with newer systems coming along, it gets even more complicated.

In reply to @Mingdee

Homespot have just put in a option so you can update the Broadcast name on its BA210 v2. You can also alter the SQ volume level. We were going to purchase one of the expensive broadcast systems, but most have been delayed so long in their releases. At least now we can try things out and slowly get Church members to update their hearing aids with Auracast versions. In the interim, some parishioners are just using over the ear Auracast headphones over their hearing aids. The cheap system does mean you need someone cluey with IT and apps to help people. Much better quality compared to a .

Has anyone heard from Philips around their update to the Hearlink App to support ? (To support the Philips hearing aids that are Auracast compatible) Google is telling me its planned to be released in “Summer 2025”.

I’d love to share with you our TM broadcast audio experience to date at Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Manassas, .

We have an existing transmitter that is used with loaner bodypacks and either earbuds or headphones within our worship space. As a next iteration on our hearing assistance support, we split the feed to the FM transmitter and hooked up a HomeSpot BA-210 AuracastTM broadcast audio transmitter.

This immediately just simply worked! We were able to connect with multiple Auracast-capable devices, including HomeSpot’s own JY-300 neckband and BA-310 receiver. We also tested successfully with Galaxy Pro 3 earbuds. JBL Go-4 speakers worked, but differently and with an unacceptable latency - the primary Go-4 receives a Classic transmission from the BA-210, then sends an AuracastTM broadcast audio transmission, introducing a lag that was too large to use within the same area as the audio source.

So we went live with the HomeSpot transmitter a couple Sundays ago. Oops! The transmitter was right next to a 2.4GHz diversity receiver, and interfered with that reception. Even moving 2.5 feet away was not sufficient. What did work was to use longer cables, and raise the HomeSpot transmitter about 8 feet off the ground, and about 9 feet away from the 2.4GHz receiver.

image HomeSpot BA-210 on a sponge
(I’m restricted to one image as a new member with new posts. Will put additional pix in next posts).

You can see the BA-210 cable-tied to a sponge and wedged into the space between the beam and the wall above the A/V booth in the back of our nave. We may even try to make this look prettier in the future :smile:.

However, at that point we noticed some noise had been introduced. We had to put a ground isolation transformer inline, and not too far from the BA-210 transmitter, in order to resolve this.

Last Sunday, we operated successfully in our roughly 80’x50’ worship space, with no dead spots detected.

(I’m restricted to one image as a new member with new posts. Will put additional pix in next posts).

We also have cobbled together a “pew pack” for our choir loft as some members have trouble hearing the service in the loft. This pew pack consists of a 4xAA battery pack with a USB Y-cable providing power to both the BA-310 receiver and a set of low-end PC speakers. We found a small, black over-the-door hooked frame and a black pouch to hold the components. The speakers are attached to the frame with stiff hinges, allowing the speakers to be adjusted and pointed upwards towards the listener. In the above image, the battery pack and HomeSpot BA-310 are hanging out of the pouch for your viewing, and are stuffed into the pouch during normal operation. Since this photo, we have used black electrical tape to hide the LEDs.

HomeSpot has indicated they may soon have a neckband with speakers to receive the AuracastTM broadcast audio transmission. This is exactly what our pew pack is trying to do, but it would be several orders of magnitude better to have HomeSpot’s product when it’s available!

Another test we did was to daisy-chain the HomeSpot transmitter and receiver. We hooked a BA-310 receiver’s output to the input of a second BA-210 receiver. The primary BA-210 transmitter signal dropped off just beyond our narthex, so we put the BA-310/BA-210 pair as a repeater in the narthex.

We verified this extended the range of the audio broadcast via the second tier stream, and the latency was low - noticeable but tolerable. But the latency wasn’t the point of the test. We have physical cabling and speakers at several locations in our building, so people in those rooms can hear the audio from the service (such as in the nursery). We think we’d have complete building coverage with a tertiary tier. So if we needed audio in another location, or if one of the existing speakers or cabling failed, we have an extremely economical alternative to provide this audio in our building.

Hope this helps someone!

image

Picture of Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church, A/V booth at back of nave. Notice the BA-210 wedged between the beam and the wall above the A/V booth.

image Pew Pack

Picture of the pew pack we cobbled together for the choir loft at Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Manassas, .

@gregh Smashing work/post, thank you very much.

Apart from all the stuff, one thing that I’ve noticed is the superb brick work and the laminated curved beams :blush:

It’s true that the primary sound system must be clean and clear before any hearing reinforcement system connected to it can operate correctly.

We are a small church with about 150-200 people attending regularly. We struggle with a loud humming noise on the frequency, which makes telecoil basically unusable. That includes all systems that transfer the signal to a necklace or similar, which then emits the telecoil signal. Our tech guys say it’s basically impossible to get rid of that hum as it has to do with how the place is wired up and the soft-lights etc. I’m not an electrician and I have no ambitions to become one, so I just take that as a fact.
We do have an astounding concentration of Signia hearing aid users. Signia left, right and centre. Has anybody ever tried to use a TV streamer for this kind of purpose? Oticon has the EduMic, which would be ideal, but I don’t think Signia has anything comparable, and our congregation is solidly Signia-wearing.

My guess is a ground loop inducing hum. If the ground loop equipment is disconnected and the port monitored is the hum there? Isolate it between the sound system and the loop?

WH

Has the loop ever worked without electrical noise? If has worked cleanly at some point, have there been any additions to the electrical system, like lightning dimmers? Some of these devices can put current spikes that may induce noise directly into the hearing assist coil itself.

In reply to @Speedskater

I can’t turn all breakers off, it’s a large building with lots of stuff that I can’t turn off. Well, I could, but it would make me very unpopular. Yes, popularity is not everything, but in this case they would be justified… :wink:

In reply to @Baltazard

Signia’s TV Streamer claims it can connect to any number of users. It has a range of 10m. No idea what shape that signal has, whether it is a directed beam (narrow), a semicircle or even entirely non-directional. A greater range would be better for my scenario, but for TV streaming it makes sense.

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