natalyad

Connevans fmGenie

In 2007 after not having used radio aids since primary school I got a Connevans fmGenie radio aid system with the transmitter and a receiver which I connected to my Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) via a Direct Audio Input lead.

BAHA upgrade

In 2011 I upgraded my analogue BAHA Classic + digital BAHA Divino to a pair of BAHA Intensos from Cochlear which are both digital (but not really programmable).

I continued to use my fmGenie but struggled with increased radio interference hissing problems which could only be reduced by waving the transmitter box around to the least hissy place. I tried multiple units and all were equally poor. I can only conclude I'm hearing the hiss I couldn't before or there are more sources of radio interference around.

Comfort Digisystem - digital radio aid

In April 2013 I attended an assistive technology seminar and I got a chance to talk with Gordon Morris himself who demonstrated the Comfort Digisystem to me because I had a direct audio lead with me.

The digisystem is very modular with a variety of different units.

I have:

Transmitter Microphone DM10 which can clip onto the lapel of a speaker.

Conference Microphone DC20 which can be used as a transmitter and receiver.

Receiver DH10 which I use to connect my BAHA to the system via Direct Audio leads.

Initial impressions

My partner is very geeky so I let her loose with the manual and the digisystem bits figuring I could let her do the difficult bits. We then spent the afternoon playing with the different modes.

One advantage of some of the advanced digisystem modules is that they can all connect through one another. In my case this means that as well as the DC20 conference mic and DM10 lapel mic each pairing with the DH10 receiver that the DM10 mic can connect through the DC conference mic. This is useful for hearing a single speaker AND a more local group and mute each source independently.

This pairing process is possibly quite tricky, I still need to get my head around that so I can redo it if needed.

The DC20 conference mic can also act as a receiver unit cutting out the need for the receiver unit in some situations. This is definitely useful for me and I had used the fmGenie in similar ways. The 3.5mm jack on this can be used for line in, headphones in and microphone in and has a menu option for changing the mode and how loud each one is.

The DM10 lapel mic has no menus or interface other than on/off and pairing. The menus on the DH10 receiver and DC20 conference mic are very straight forward and use words which is great, I detest menus which use pictures as I can't remember which is which. The multi-directional switch is flicked up/down to move and pressed centrally to click as it were which takes a bit of getting used to.

Gordon had shown me the Equaliser on the DC20 conference mic when he demoed it which I really liked. The BAHA isn't great below 250Hz and my worst hearing frequencies are below about 800Hz. I have initially set mine to drop everything 500Hz and below to as low as it'll go, a peak at 1kHz and then levelling out at the higher frequencies. The sound is artificial but is useful for prioritising certain sounds.

There is also some background noise processing going on as I found some modes would cut out the computer noise from the room after a few seconds, especially if I switched between directional mic and omni mic mode on the DC20. Mode switching is easy with a remote control with options, or buttons on the side of the DC20.

We did experiment with the external lavallier mic added to the DM10 lapel mic and it worked just fine but I didn't think it was something I would rely on very often as it's yet more bits.

What next?

I hope to start using it at work in meetings and training sessions to get a better idea of how it works in practice.