Hi there welcome back to Value Hearing's youtube
channel. I'm Emma, a clinical audiologist and
today i'm not actually going to talk about a
new hearing aid technology i'm going to talk about a new hearing
aid accessory! So it's the starkey table mic that i'd
like to talk about, it only came out a few months ago and
it's not completely unique to the industry at all
but it is new for Starkey and it's really, really quite exciting as an
audiologist to have yet another accessory that we
can offer. So i would love to tell you that
everyone that comes in to see us in the clinic will walk away with
hearing aids that will allow them to hear as well as someone with normal
hearing or even better. Unfortunately this is not the case, the
technology has improved a lot so more and more people are
getting closer and closer to normal hearing functioning
but there will always unfortunately be some people where hearing aids are just
not enough to allow them to understand speech in very noisy situations
or when they're trying to communicate with someone from a significant distance
or if they're somewhere where there's a lot of reverberation. Those tend to be
the three situations where people really report difficulties
so what can we do? Well, we generally will fit the hearing aids
as well as we can we will counsel clients on their
expectations but as audiologists we also have to
consider what other technology is on the market to help these people and there is
actually quite a lot of choice. So the starkey table mic
is one fantastic example, so essentially imagine it as
an extra microphone or in fact it's actually
eight microphones so you've got your two hearing aids
that will help you hear around you and this is something that you're going to
put in the middle of for example a noisy
restaurant table so you're out with several people having
conversations and you're struggling to hear them well
this you will put down in the middle and it has a few modes but for that kind
of situation we would put it into automatic mode and
it's pretty cool because what happens is it actually
looks for the strongest voice for you and it will focus using these
eight microphones it will beam form and focus on that
particular person and reduce the noise that's coming from
all the other directions then if the direction of the strongest
talker was to change such as someone else at the table was to
answer the question that's just been asked
the technology will pick that up and will actually change its beam form
straight away so that you will then hear the next
strongest talker so you can generally just let the
technology work for you however if you want and there are some situations where
this will happen you can actually take over and have some
control so that's what they call the manual mode
so you can actually touch the buttons and choose what
direction you want to hear so you can have one to two directions
that you want to hear from and the others will be damped or
the noise will be reduced from the other directions this is very good
often clients will report that they're out somewhere
and there may be two different conversations happening
and it can get exhausting trying to focus on one well this will help you
you're able to actually say look table mic i want you to listen to
these people here and not these people on the other side
of the table so the other wonderful option that
they've given you which i really like is an option for more quiet environments
so this is when you can go into what they call surround mode so it's
essentially an omnidirectional mode where you're hearing from all directions
equally so that'll be great for my clients who
want to use this not necessarily in noisy situations all the time but
they want to use it in a quieter environment such as a work meeting or
even maybe the dinner table at home if it's fairly quiet
you would put it in the middle and instead of it trying to roam and look
for the strongest voice it will just let you hear
all of the directions for you so those are the main modes that you would
use as a table microphone but what's really cool with it as well
that i like is that you can actually convert it into a
remote microphone as well so once you lift it up like this it will
when it's at this angle know that it is only picking up above
itself so the reason it does this is so that it can be worn
so it actually comes with its own little neck loop or
necklace as i call it which has a magnet on it
and then you basically attach it to that magnet
you'll see that light has lit up now we'll pop it on so this
is not for you to wear but for your communication partner to wear
like so okay so the whole point of it
is that you will be able to then go outside into a very noisy environment
noisy restaurant with your partner and or any communication partner
and it will work like a third year so you've got your two ears here
again helping you here around you and then ear number three
is right on top of your partner so it will actually mean that they have
direct access to your ears the whole time they're wearing them
it is wonderful in very very noisy environments
a lot of my clients love it for going out for dinner and
out to cafes and things they also love it just day to day
so a lot of my clients will report that they love that when they're in the car
with their partner and their partner is driving or in their passenger seat
that they can hear them directly into their ears others will say just even
being able to hear each other at home is wonderful so this will work up to 10
meters distance within reason obviously big
thick walls and electrical cables can interfere a little with that
but essentially up to 10 meters so that can allow
the partner to communicate from a significant distance at home
but also if they're out shopping together i get lots of reports of
examples of couples going out to the supermarket
and being able to wear this just means it's so much easier
for the hearing impaired person to understand what's being said
and just leads to less exhaustion in a lot of ways because like i said it is
literally like having your partner's voice directly into your ears so this is
a wonderful mode we do have other technology that works
like this it simply is just a remote microphone
but this is quite unique that it's the table microphone and
a remote microphone option so the other option as well of course it
does come with a cable i'll show you which
will allow you to connect it into any auxiliary output so any television
that has an auxiliary headphone output any computer
some phones as well so when i say phones i mean thing places
that have landlines for your work for example or you're
working in a call center then you do need in most cases a
converted device but you can then connect this directly into
the work phone system to have the signal going
straight into your ears both ears with a much better sound
quality so great for people who work on the phones a lot we've got plenty of
clients in that position but one of the applications that a
number of clients have used over the years for something like this is
actually if they travel a lot you can plug it directly into the
entertainment system on the airplane or train so
very very versatile the other option is of course
if you don't want to use auxiliary cable to connect to the tv
or the hi-fi system at home you can actually just put the
microphone in front of the speaker itself so it works a bit like a remote
tv connection so if you had several tvs at home or you
have several homes that you move through or you're going on holiday
take it with you and like i said you can just put it in front of the speaker off
the tv so super super flexible and we are
said very excited to be able to offer this technology
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