Other Services

Custom Hearing Protection

We offer custom hearing protection for a variety of situations. We will help you choose the best hearing protection you might need. We also offer custom fit earpieces for IPods and other music players.

Electronic earplugs are designed to enhance the sounds around you like speech and game movements, but contain sharper impulse sounds down to a designated safe level such as gunfire and flash bangs. Used within the shooting sports and law enforcement divisions, these devices are excellent in protection and enhancement qualities.

Non-electronic earplugs protect against water and noise. They can be used in a number of industrial and recreational applications such as shooting, swimming, motorcycling, industrial work, etc.

Filtered earplugs are beneficial when individuals want to have the ability to hear their outside sounds, but still maintain a safe level of protection. Filtered earplugs include:

• Acoustic filtered earplugs which are best for industrial noise and shooting sports.
  
  
• Musician filtered earplugs that allow practicing and performing in a variety of different settings.
  
  
• Custom or universal fit Musician Monitors provide excellent isolation from stage/crowd noise. This in turn allows the musician to monitor the mix at lower levels - protecting the user from hearing loss.
  
  
• Indoor/outdoor range plugs - One end is inserted to hear most low level sounds, but loud impulse noises such as weapons fire are suppressed. The other end provides steady protection for constant high-level sounds such as aircraft.

Assistive Listening Devices

An assistive listening device (ALD) is any type of device that can help you function better in your day-to-day communication situations. An ALD can be used with or without hearing aids to overcome the negative effects of distance, background noise, or poor room acoustics. So even though you have a hearing aid, ALDs can offer greater ease of hearing (and therefore reduced stress and fatigue) in many day-to-day communication situations.

We sell and offer information and guidance on the use of assistive listening devices such as amplified telephones, FM transmitter systems, and infrared systems. These systems serve as additional help in situations when hearing aids do not provide the necessary assistance.

Auditory Assistive Listening Devices

Personal Frequency Modulation (FM) Systems

Personal FM systems are like miniature radio stations operating on special frequencies assigned by the FCC. The personal FM system consists of a transmitter microphone used by the speaker and a receiver used by you, the listener. The receiver transmits the sound to your hearing aid either through direct audio input or through a looped cord worn around your neck. Personal FM systems are useful in a variety of situations such as listening to a travel guide or book review, in a classroom lecture, in a restaurant, in a sales meeting, or in a nursing home or senior center.

FM systems are also used in theaters, places of worship, museums, public meeting places, corporate conference rooms, convention centers, and other large areas for gathering. In this situation, the microphone/transmitter is built into the overall sound system. You are provided with an FM receiver that can connect to your hearing aid (or to a headset if you don't wear a hearing aid).

Infrared systems are often used in the home with TV sets, but, like the FM system, they can also be used in large settings like theaters.

Sound is transmitted using infrared light waves. The TV is set at a volume comfortable for family members. The infrared system transmitter transmits the TV signal to your receiver, which you can adjust to your desired volume. Thus, TV watching as a family becomes pleasurable for all. While it is not too loud for family members with normal hearing, the volume is just right for you because it is adjusted by you through your individual receiver.

Induction Loop Systems are most common in large group areas. They can also be purchased for individual use.

An induction loop wire is permanently installed (perhaps under a carpet) and connects to a microphone used by a speaker. (In the case of individual systems, a wire loop is laid on the floor around you and the speaker.) The person talking into the microphone creates a current in the wire which makes an electromagnetic field in the room. When you switch your hearing aid to the "T" (telecoil/telephone) setting, your hearing aid telecoil picks up the electromagnetic signal, and you can adjust its volume through your hearing aid.

One-To-One Communicators

Sometimes you want to be able to easily hear one person, such as in a restaurant, nursing home situation, or riding in a car. Or perhaps you are delivering a lecture or running a meeting and a person in the audience has a question. You can give the person a microphone to speak into. The sound is amplified and delivered directly into your hearing aid (or headset if you don't have a hearing aid), and you can adjust the volume to your comfort level. When using the one-to-one communicator, the speaker does not have to shout, private conversations can remain private, and, when in a car, your eyes can remain on the road!

Assisted Listening Devices for Telephones

Special telephone amplifiers are available that replace the telephone handset, attach to the phone between the handset the phone itself (in-line amplifiers), and attach to the handset and are powered by a battery (portable amplifiers). Each of these amplifiers can be used with or without a hearing aid.

These standard telephone amplifiers can be coupled to a hearing aid in two ways: (1) acoustically and (2) inductively. With acoustic coupling, the amplifier is held up to the hearing aid's microphone. While this tends to work well with a CIC hearing aid, it usually results in an annoying whistling sound (feedback) with the larger hearing aid models. However, if the larger models are equipped with a telecoil circuit, then the hearing aid can be set to "T" and held next to the amplifier, with no feedback. Some newer models of hearing aids have an automatic or "touchless" telecoil that turns itself on whenever the hearing aid is held next to the telephone. In order to receive a signal from the phone, the telephone must be "hearing aid compatible (HAC)."

For people who always use a hearing aid with a telecoil, a portable, battery-powered acoustic-to-magnetic adaptor can be attached to the earpiece of the telephone handset. The device picks up the acoustic energy (sound) from the telephone and changes it to electromagnetic energy, which is picked up by the hearing aid's telecoil. A silhouette inductor can be plugged into the device to allow for listening on the phone with two hearing aid telecoils. This option may be helpful if you are one of those individuals whose speech understanding improves significantly when listening with both ears.

Special telephones with built-in amplification are also available in both standard and wireless handset models. Some models allow the connection of a cochlear implant, a DAI cord, or a neckloop and some are powerful enough to be used without a hearing aid - a big convenience when the telephone rings in the middle of the night.

Also available are devices that enable you to use your hearing aid(s) with a digital cell phone for distortion and noise-free reception.

Visual Devices

Visual Telephone Devices

For those who cannot understand over the voice telephone, even with amplification, there are other options such as the Voice Carry Over (VCO) or "read and talk" Telephone. Used with the telephone relay service, VCO allows you to talk directly to the other party while an operator translates what the other party says to you into print that is displayed on a small LCD screen.

Alerting Devices

Alerting devices allow hard of hearing and deaf people to be aware of many environmental sounds and situations in the home, in school or in the workplace, as well as for travel and recreation. Such systems use either microphones or electrical connections to pick up the desired signal and hardwired or wireless transmission to send the signal to you in a form to which you can respond. For example, when someone presses the doorbell button, when the phone rings or the fire alarm is activated, these events can trigger a flashing incandescent or fluorescent light, a loud horn, a vibrational device (pager, bed shaker), or a fan. Some systems use a combination of signals. For example, an alarm clock that will beep, flash a lamp, and shake the bed - simultaneously.

Alerting devices can be purchased individually to warn a person of a specific event or as complete systems that warn a person of a variety of events. For example, someone living in a one-room studio apartment might need just a simple device that flashes a single light when someone presses the doorbell, whereas another individual living in a large house with many rooms may need a system that triggers flashing lamps in every room of the house when the doorbell is pressed, the telephone rings, or the fire alarm is activated. Some systems use coded flashing lights (e.g. 5 flashes for the doorbell vs. one flash for every time the phone rings) whereas others use a vibrating body-worn pager that vibrates and displays a number corresponding to the event (e.g. number 1 = fire; number 2 = doorbell).