Home theater for hearing impaired

[highfigh]

The first thing that's needed is to see her audiogram, so the frequencies with a deficit will be known. Then, the equalizer can be adjusted to provide her with a quasi-normal frequency response. Unfortunately, you and anyone else in the room will hate the way it sounds because it will only fit her ears.

Churches use a system for the hearing impaired that involves using a transmitter and headphones. For her, the speech is more important than the sound effects and this may be a good solution. IIRC, Atlas Soundolier makes these. If you want, I'll check with one of my suppliers to find out if they sell them.

Hearing aid technology has come a long way recently and it's largely due to Les Paul, who needed them in his later years, but found that the sound quality was really bad. Being the inventer he was and having been involved in audio for as long as he was, his ideas made a big difference when it came to being able to tailor the sound to each individual's hearing deficits.

 

[Pyrrho]

I have a 10 year old home theater set-up, with a decent B&W center channel. Though a bit muddy sounding, it has served us well. Now my wife's hearing is going, and she often cannot make out the dialogue. I am looking for a decent center channel, up to $1000 (but closer to $500 would be good) that produces especially crisp dialogue. I guess that means it would have a "bright" sound, but, if that's what it takes for my wife to be able to hear, then that would be fine. I have looked at the Klipsch Reference Series, B&W CM Centre, and Axiom VP150 and 180 for starters, but could use a lot of help, still. Coming from a small town, I'd like to have a good idea of what to focus on when I get to a decent home theater store.
Thanks

Another idea for a center channel occurred to me since posting in this thread earlier. You might want to try a speaker from Magnepan for clear dialog.

http://www.magnepan.com/

 

[highfigh]

Another idea for a center channel occurred to me since posting in this thread earlier. You might want to try a speaker from Magnepan for clear dialog.

http://www.magnepan.com/

The dialog from a Magnapan will only be clear to a person with "normal" hearing. When a person has a severe deficit in the areas that make speech unintelligible, that speaker won't help, at all. They need reinforcement in the areas where they have a deficit.

 

[Pyrrho]

The dialog from a Magnapan will only be clear to a person with "normal" hearing. When a person has a severe deficit in the areas that make speech unintelligible, that speaker won't help, at all. They need reinforcement in the areas where they have a deficit.

It is unclear how much of her trouble with dialog from the home theater is due to hearing loss and how much is due to the current center channel speaker being "a bit muddy sounding". Naturally, a better center channel speaker will not magically cure her hearing, but a clearer speaker is easier to understand generally. And that might be enough to take care of the immediate problem. Or not, as we do not know enough about the nature of her hearing loss.

 

[highfigh]

Naturally, a better center channel speaker will not magically cure her hearing, but a clearer speaker is easier to understand generally. And that might be enough to take care of the immediate problem. Or not, as we do not know enough about the nature of her hearing loss.

For people with "normal" hearing, I would agree but once hearing loss enters the discussion, any suggestions we make are only guesses without knowing exactly how much acuity has been lost and where. I have a customer whose wife uses her iPod all the time and cranks the snot out of it. She's about 50 and her hearing isn't very good. She has problems with dialogue when the movies and TV shows are on so I started asking questions about how it sounded after I could hear her ear buds from across the room. I added a little EQ in the upper mid-range (not enough to make it annoying for everyone else). The next time I saw her away from their house, she thanked me and asked what I did because it was so much easier for her to understand what was being said. I just guessed, but it wasn't a completely uneducated guess.

Sometimes, a little change goes a long way.