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Listening to car radio through Resound Future

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I’m trying to find a way of listening to my car radio through my Resound Future ’s. I’ve called Crutchfield/Resound customer service/Bluetooth in Kirkland, WA asking for a solution to my problem. Resound has the Mini Mic which would pick up the audio from the radio and transmit it to the HA but would also send the road noise as well. The newer radio receivers one can purchase can receive bluetooth but do not send it. Crutchfield could not find a radio receiver with an 3.5 mm output port to hang a bluetooth dongle. I’m not an electronics guy, but I think that application would work if available. Bluetooth in Kirkland, WA didn’t have a solution. So, if you have any thoughts regarding my problem, I would love to hear them.

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@dkssage said:

I’m trying to find a way of listening to my car radio through my Resound Future HA’s. I’ve called Crutchfield/Resound customer service/Bluetooth in Kirkland, WA asking for a solution to my problem. Resound has the Mini Mic which would pick up the audio from the radio and transmit it to the HA but would also send the road noise as well. The newer radio receivers one can purchase can receive bluetooth but do not send it. Crutchfield could not find a radio receiver with an 3.5 mm output port to hang a bluetooth dongle. I’m not an electronics guy, but I think that application would work if available. Bluetooth in Kirkland, WA didn’t have a solution. So, if you have any thoughts regarding my problem, I would love to hear them.

Since you will not be using your car speakers it really would not matter where you get the signal, right? You could use a small portable radio with an headphone jack and connect the headphone jack of the radio to the Mini Mic.

Another possibility is that some vehicles have a headphone jack for the back seat passenger.

Yet another possibility is that some smartphones have a built in radio. Mine does but it only works if you connect headphones so you still might need the mini mic.

The only one of those possibilities that would give you all the functionality of your car system (AM/FM, presets, satellite radio) would be if your car system has a headphone jack somewhere.

I don’t know the manufacturer but Fry’s Electronics sells several Bluetooth car radio transmitters that is either wired in or plugged into the radio and transmit the signal to another Bluetooth device. I saw the plug in one at their store and I believe it was around $30. Good luck!

I have found that in the car any kind of portable radio does not get very good reception so I decided to stay with the car’s own audio system. Here’s what works for me:-

At the back of the car radio is 4 RCA jacks with plugs connected to the 4 speakers in the car. (L & R Front & Rear). I bought a 6ft adapter cable with 2 RCA plugs on one end and the usual 1/8" stereo plug at the other. With this I connected my neckloop streamer to the 2 RCA jacks for the rear speakers.

Now, if I want to listen to the radio through the neckloop, I use the radio’s fader to select the rear speakers. If I want to listen in the “regular” manner, I fade to the front speakers.

Thanks,
Gilbert

I tried a device that went with my Widex 330s that I could listen to the TV through my …Trouble was, I couldnt hear the wife talking to me, all I could hear was the TV…OK, maybe it wasnt a bad thing…LOL

Anyways, my point is, do you think its a good idea to be driving a car when you cant hear anything going on around you?

Thanks for the ideas in allowing my car radio to be transmitted to my new Resounds which I pick up from Costco tomorrow. I guess the first thing to do is to see how well the Resounds work by themselves in picking up the car radios audio. They may just work fine. But if they don’t I’ll be looking into the ideas supplied on this forum. Yes, and above all I want to be safe on the road for myself and others.

In reply to @Gilbert

Thanks Gilbert for your response. What I’m visualizing is that you unplugged the rear speaker wires from the back of the receiver and in their place plugged in the 6 ft adapter cable with the 1/8 inch stereo. Help me out here if you would with more detail as how your neckloop streamer actually connects to the adapter you purchased. The only thing I can visualize is that your neckloop connects directly to the adapter. I like your idea of using the fader function to either transmit to you or not… Thanks. Great idea!!

@dkssage said:

Thanks Gilbert for your response. What I’m visualizing is that you unplugged the rear speaker wires from the back of the receiver and in their place plugged in the 6 ft adapter cable with the 1/8 inch stereo. Help me out here if you would with more detail as how your neckloop streamer actually connects to the adapter you purchased. The only thing I can visualize is that your neckloop connects directly to the adapter. I like your idea of using the fader function to either transmit to you HA or not… Thanks. Great idea!!

One way you could do it is with a Resound Mini Mic. The Mini Mic has a line in connector for connecting directly from a headphone port (or RCA jacks using an adapter) of a music source. The Mini Mic would transmit directly to the hearing aids.

In reply to @dkssage

@dkssage said:

Thanks for the ideas in allowing my car radio to be transmitted to my new Resounds which I pick up from Costco tomorrow. I guess the first thing to do is to see how well the Resounds work by themselves in picking up the car radios audio. They may just work fine. But if they don’t I’ll be looking into the ideas supplied on this forum. Yes, and above all I want to be safe on the road for myself and others.

It may take some time to get used to the new hearing aids and it may also take several adjustments to get everything just right. I like the music program on mine and listen to XM radio in the car using the music program on the hearing aids. I would only need another device if listening to music on my phone, and the phone clip does an OK job of that.

Thanks Don for the suggestions and what works for you. I pick up my ’s in a couple of hours and will give your thoughts a try. I appreciate the ideas from all. Thanks.

In reply to @Don

dkssage

Be careful what you say about wanting to listening to music through your hearing aids when you talk to your Costco hearing aid specialist . That was one of the things that got me in trouble . To quote the Costco hearing aid specialist " the speakers are to small ". I still think it is worth a try , but I don’t have the hearing aids to try it . The transmitters that I ordered arrived just after I returned the hearing aids . Good luck and don’t forget to tell us how it works out .

I tried wireless playback of music into the ReSound Aleras and didn’t find the sound quality good enough for me. TV shows: good enough; music, no. I find the aids okay at reproducing music except where wireless is involved. I’m not disagreeing with others who say it is good enough for them. Obviously, everyone’s mileage on this may vary. All you can do is try it and make up your own mind.

I would just caution you before spending this much money on aids and optional accessories and wanting the ability to wirelessly pipe in music being a key feature for you: you may be disappointed. It really was designed for spoken voice, not music, and it may or may not do well enough with music wirelessly that you’ll want to use it this way.

I had thought the Bernafon Chronos or Verite with the Soundgate was supposed to be pretty good…I don’t know personally. I am trialling the Chronos right now but don’t have the bluetooth accessory to compare to. When comparing the Chronos or the Verite with the Futures, I find the sound much more natural, however speech discrimination is suffering slightly;the Futures have a crisper sound to me. Music with the Chronos is better so I am assuming music would be better with the Chronos than with the Futures/Aleras

dkssage, I use the Phonak iCom which can transmit anything to my ’s from its stereo jack. You are correct - I connect directly to the rear speaker jacks on the car radio to the iCom. The HA microphones are muted but not turned completely off so I still hear other sounds.

The quality of sound when listening to music is not as good as good headphones but this is related to your coupling more than to the brand of HA’s. HA’s are pushing only the high tones into your ears because you have no hearing loss for low tones. Therefore music transmitted directly to your HA’s will be short of bass and it will sound tinny. On the other hand, if you wear or power domes the music quality will be much better, as your HA’s are transmitting a broader range of frequencies.

Thanks,
Gilbert

Resound Futures installed, functioning and working well. Fresh batteries, clean filters, what else could I ask for? I did purchase the phone clip and synced my droid smart phone to it in right there is the office. Played a little Aerosmith-“Mama Kin” and it worked very nicely. Like Gilbert mentioned, the bass sounds were lacking but the high tones were certainly there. Not perfect but acceptable to me. The more I listen via the phone clip, most likely, the more acceptable it will become.

While driving home, I listened to the car/truck radio just using the ’s. I was able to pickup the bass sounds as well and the trebles via the HA’s. I am assuming if I streamed to my aids, I would again loose the bass but maintain the treble tones. I think for now, I’ll just use my HA’s to listen to the radio, the bass does provide a lot of enjoyment.
By the way, I also purchased the Resound Streamer for the TV. Again, the same issues take place. With the volume off on the TV and using only the streamer, the low tones were missing but the highs were there. I had fairly good success with the volume on the TV up and streaming. Much better lows received and with good crisp highs. I’ve also been using over the last year, wireless headphone to transmit the voice. At this point, I believe they work best and will probably return the streamer to Costco…

Thanks again for all your suggestions. You all have been great!

Thanks Seb, I’ll do that. I went to Best Buy yesterday to discuss with them the topic of this post. Well, here is what I got. I spoke to one of the receiver installers and he said it would be easy and inexpensive to “wire in” a couple of RCA jacks into my existing radio speaker wires. Doing this would allow a bluetooth dongle to be snapped into place which would then send signal to my phone clip. He said he does this all the time for folks who want to install an amp into their factory radio system. Factory radio systems generally don’t come with RCA jack on the back and RCA jacks are necessary for amp installation. He thought around $60 dollars would do the installation of RCA jack. I think the dongle sells for around $70.

In reply to @Gilbert

@Gilbert said:

I have found that in the car any kind of portable radio does not get very good reception so I decided to stay with the car’s own audio system. Here’s what works for me:-

At the back of the car radio is 4 RCA jacks with plugs connected to the 4 speakers in the car. (L & R Front & Rear). I bought a 6ft adapter cable with 2 RCA plugs on one end and the usual 1/8" stereo plug at the other. With this I connected my neckloop streamer to the 2 RCA jacks for the rear speakers.

Now, if I want to listen to the radio through the neckloop, I use the radio’s fader to select the rear speakers. If I want to listen in the “regular” manner, I fade to the front speakers.

Thanks,
Gilbert

Hi Gilbert

do you have to use the remote to activate the streamer

In reply to @dkssage

@dkssage said:

Resound Futures installed, functioning and working well. Fresh batteries, clean filters, what else could I ask for? I did purchase the phone clip and synced my droid smart phone to it in right there is the office. Played a little Aerosmith-“Mama Kin” and it worked very nicely. Like Gilbert mentioned, the bass sounds were lacking but the high tones were certainly there. Not perfect but acceptable to me. The more I listen via the phone clip, most likely, the more acceptable it will become.

While driving home, I listened to the car/truck radio just using the HA’s. I was able to pickup the bass sounds as well and the trebles via the open fit HA’s. I am assuming if I streamed to my aids, I would again loose the bass but maintain the treble tones. I think for now, I’ll just use my HA’s to listen to the radio, the bass does provide a lot of enjoyment.
By the way, I also purchased the Resound Streamer for the TV. Again, the same issues take place. With the volume off on the TV and using only the streamer, the low tones were missing but the highs were there. I had fairly good success with the volume on the TV up and streaming. Much better lows received and with good crisp highs. I’ve also been using over the last year, wireless headphone to transmit the voice. At this point, I believe they work best and will probably return the streamer to Costco…

Thanks again for all your suggestions. You all have been great!

I use one of the 4 programs for road noise, call it Traffic
I’ve programed it to cut down road noise in that program,
can hear people in the car a lot better and can even understand the radio :wink:

if you was to use the phone clip to stream the radio what would happen to an in coming call

Hook-Up, The iCom automatically connects when you plug in a sound source. You can then start or stop streaming by hitting the big button on the front. The remote is not needed.
Also if the cell phone receives a call whilst streaming this will override the radio and the iCom switches to Bluetooth so you are on the phone in handsfree mode (the microphone is in the iCom around you neck)

Thanks,
Gilbert

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