Susan Knox Wilson
Our newly renovated Renaissance Theater boasts a myriad of marvelous enhancements, but for many theater-goers the most wondrous addition is the new hearing loop system that has been installed.
The Renaissance Theater now has a hearing aid compatible loop system which delivers sound that’s customized by one’s hearing aids for one’s own ears. It requires no fuss with extra equipment; people need only activate the telecoils in their hearing aids. There’s no need to seek out and wear conspicuous equipment (which few people with hearing loss like to do). Additionally, the sound is contained in one’s ear, without bothering others nearby. There is no need to juggle between headsets and hearing aids and there are no hygienic concerns about putting in or on one’s ear what has been around others’ ears.
In most public places, the hearing-impaired hear the broadcast sound, but only after it has traveled some distance from a loudspeaker, reverberated off walls and gotten mixed with other room noise. Hearing loop systems take sound straight from the source and deliver it right into the listener’s head. It’s as if one’s head was located in the microphone — without extraneous noise or blurring of the sound with distance from the sound source.
In the Renaissance Theater, the hearing loop is installed in the floor around the periphery of the room. The loop, a thin strand of copper wire, radiates electromagnetic signals that can be picked up by a tiny receiver already built into most hearing aids and cochlear implants. When the receiver is turned on, the hearing aid receives only the sounds coming directly from a microphone, not the background cacophony.
According to the Hearing Loss Association of America, the largest group representing people with hearing problems, more than 48 million (or 20 percent) Americans have some degree of hearing loss and the greater people’s need for hearing assistance, the more likely they are to have hearing aids with telecoils. New model cochlear implants also offer telecoils. With a simple flick of a tiny switch in the telecoil-equipped hearing aid, users change from a microphone (M) to a telecoil (T) mode.
Theater-goers without hearing aids, or who may have hearing aids without telecoils, can still make use of the hearing assist broadcast system also in place in the Renaissance Theater. The headphone system continues to be an option and the megahertz frequency is the same — they simply use their headphone set and receiver as always, tuned to 72.3 MHz, Williams PPA R35-8 Channel 2 Universal Wide Band Frequency Channel. The new hearing loop and the hearing assist broadcast are separate choices and do not conflict.
The Hearing Loss Association of America has joined with the American Academy of Audiology in a campaign to make loops more common in the United States — and we’re proud to join them!