Hearing assist

Jay Ashworth

Well-Known Member
I didn't want to hijack her thread, so I came over here:

How many receivers do you folks have, for how many seats, and how often do they get used? (What percentage of shows see one checked out, and, I guess, what is the largest number you've had out simultaneously)...

Our 241 seat mainstage, which used to be active 200 nights a year with college and rental shows, has *never had a single receiver checked out ever* in 12 years. 5 72MHz Williams; we have a transmitter in our blackbox, too, never there either...
 
We have transmitters/receivers Very seldom are they requested for hearing impaired. We do have select shows where we also run audio description for the blind on a second channel and those shows usually have 1 to 3 patrons using the receivers. About 550 seats
 
I'd say most theaters never check them out or occasionally only check 1 of them out. Lot of people will never use it even if they would benefit from it, but sometimes usage ticks up if you have signage about it at the box office, entrances to the theater, and maybe posted on the website. There certainly is a cultural thing that in some communities or particular venues, people expect to use them more and it's more widely accepted. Definitely outside the norm but I am aware of a few theaters that often check 3-4 out most shows because they have such a regular crowd of patrons that has grown comfortable with them.

I've wavered back and forth on this over the years, but it's not uncommon these days on smaller projects to only spec 5-10 with the knowledge that it's very easy to buy more as-needed. ADA's enforcement is largely based on complaints, so if you can accommodate 1-2 people occasionally you'll avoid getting complained about -- and it's pretty unusual to see no usage for years and then suddenly get a request for 10 in one night.

On larger projects where someone's already spending several hundred thousand on the sound system, I'm more likely just to include the ADA required amount because it's a small drop in the hat in the grand scheme of things. Of course many of my projects like that are high schools so the receivers are shared between the theater, cafeteria, gym, and football field which is still permissible by ADA.
 
We do, for the record, have signs at all 4 vestibule doors *and* the box, and that doesn't seem to have been an issue.

Except for our monthly Tampa Jazz Club dates, our audience skews more to the 40s and down, rather than dead. :)
I do check the transmitter before each run, and all the receivers at the beginning of each season.
 
I didn't want to hijack her thread, so I came over here:

How many receivers do you folks have, for how many seats, and how often do they get used? (What percentage of shows see one checked out, and, I guess, what is the largest number you've had out simultaneously)...

Our 241 seat mainstage, which used to be active 200 nights a year with college and rental shows, has *never had a single receiver checked out ever* in 12 years. 5 72MHz Williams; we have a transmitter in our blackbox, too, never there either...
We're pretty active, somewhere around 250-275 events in a normal year, we average... maybe 5 checkouts a year. Can't think of a time we've had more than one active at a time. We have to have 33 on hand to be compliant, I think we have 36.
 
I've only had one request at my main gig in almost 10 years. This thread is a good reminder to go check that system out and make sure it's working since Murphy's law now says I'm due for one of those "10 a night's" Mike is talking about.

Anecdotally, I've noticed that post-COVID the church I do work for has completely stopped giving them out due to lack of requests. I think it was already phasing down with how advanced hearing aids are getting, but I'm wondering if COVID killed it altogether?
 
At my regular gig, we've only had one or two requests in the past ten years. I keep the system up and running, but it never gets used.
At the local roadhouse, there's usually one or two handed out for the larger Broadway series. That's for a room of 2300.

Re: COVID- Since all the receivers are required to have a standard headphone jack, I went to the dollar store and picked up a few sets of cheap earphones. Keep it- it's been in your ear. Clip off the channel that doesn't work to reduce confusion.
 
I've only had one request at my main gig in almost 10 years. This thread is a good reminder to go check that system out and make sure it's working since Murphy's law now says I'm due for one of those "10 a night's" Mike is talking about.

Anecdotally, I've noticed that post-COVID the church I do work for has completely stopped giving them out due to lack of requests. I think it was already phasing down with how advanced hearing aids are getting, but I'm wondering if COVID killed it altogether?

I suspect that improvement in hearing instruments is part of it. On some events at our city PAC we'll have 5-8 receivers checked out but other events will have zero. Mostly touring theater and symphony orchestra, an occasional graduation.
 
We have access to a portable system with a transmitter and several receivers. I've been here for three years and never had anyone use it at an event it is set up at, and going back at least 8-10 years it hasn't ever been used. Our arena seats 1600 and theatre seats 400. Few hundred events a year across the spaces.

- Nick
 
My last few calls at a college house had me help with this. 1750 seats, they claimed 84 receivers, in reality they brought about 20 to the box office. In 2 years, I personally saw one receiver go out, most of the time the pensioners that came to support the shows complained that it was too loud to begin with.

On the other hand, calls at some houses of similar size regularly run out.

Love the idea of having them available, but I think the crowd has to get used to the idea of having them.
 
I didn't want to hijack her thread, so I came over here:

How many receivers do you folks have, for how many seats, and how often do they get used? (What percentage of shows see one checked out, and, I guess, what is the largest number you've had out simultaneously)...

Our 241 seat mainstage, which used to be active 200 nights a year with college and rental shows, has *never had a single receiver checked out ever* in 12 years. 5 72MHz Williams; we have a transmitter in our blackbox, too, never there either...
In Hamilton we had added Sennheiser infrared in our 2183 seat main theatre but no hearing assist (at the time) in our adjacent black box Studio space. Both spaces had separate entrances and lobbies. In our main theatre's lobby. suitable signage was prominently posted proudly proclaiming our newly added system and offering hearing aid users the opportunity to test one out for free by leaving a refundable deposit and filling in a brief questionnaire advising their satisfaction with our system's performance along with where they were seated; we were anticipating reports of any dead spots.

One disgruntled gentleman returned his unit before the performance ended in our main space. Apparently he had parked in our underground parking, entered via our main lobby, read the prominently displayed signage, checked out a unit, then proceeded into our studio space. When the studio performance ended, he dutifully returned his unit, filled in our questionnaire, collected his deposit. and departed. It wasn't 'till after our main space's performance ended that the questionnaires were read and we discovered where he'd been sitting.

Oops! We added additional prominent signage.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Our "no checkouts in 11 years" record survived prominent signage at our box, and at the primary 2nd and 3rd floor entrances to our mainstage; we are also set up in our blackbox, but one transmitter or the other may be dead.
 
Our "no checkouts in 11 years" record survived prominent signage at our box, and at the primary 2nd and 3rd floor entrances to our mainstage; we are also set up in our blackbox, but one transmitter or the other may be dead.
Is it truly dead if it never gets used? Like Schrödinger's Cat?

What's the best way to advertise if signage doesn't work? Obviously after everyone's seated, it's too late make an announcement without delaying the show. I know people have put notices in the playbills and in mailings.
 
Maybe with online ticket sales, at least, you could have an entry field that says "we'd like to reserve x hearing assist receivers (no charge)" or something similar. It probably needn't actually drive any business logic behind the scenes, though it might be nice to see if more people are requesting them than you have receivers available. The main goal would be to get people to think about their availability at a time when they're not hurrying to get seated or possibly dealing with some perceived peer pressure to not stand out as old/deaf/hard of hearing or some such that seems undesirable.
 
I was just talking about Assisted Listening with my girlfriend's grandpa. He has always been an avid theatergoer with season tickets to a couple local and a couple touring houses as well as ushering with his wife.

In the past few years although he's stopped, because his hearing is bad enough that he needs the assisted listening to be able to understand the plot.
The difficulty he finds though is he can turn up the assisted listening device until it's too loud for his deaf ears and still not be able to understand the dialog.

The issues range from too much orchestra in the mix for musicals, too much mic rustling noise when they're wearing lavs, too much wind during outdoor Shakespeare.

Personally I experienced the same thing years ago when taking my grandmother to see Julia and Julia in a local AMC. They had a Sennheiser IR system but where we were sitting (in the handicap seats) I could tell we were in a shadow of the IR because if she turned her head slightly there was deafening static. She only lasted about 5 minutes before watching the movie without the headphones.


What I'm getting at is - are we fulfilling the need of assisted listening because of some legal requirement but not actually fulfilling the need of the patron?
This also may explain Jay's "no checkouts in 11 years". They just don't want the frustration.
 
I was just talking about Assisted Listening with my girlfriend's grandpa. He has always been an avid theatergoer with season tickets to a couple local and a couple touring houses as well as ushering with his wife.

In the past few years although he's stopped, because his hearing is bad enough that he needs the assisted listening to be able to understand the plot.
The difficulty he finds though is he can turn up the assisted listening device until it's too loud for his deaf ears and still not be able to understand the dialog.

The issues range from too much orchestra in the mix for musicals, too much mic rustling noise when they're wearing lavs, too much wind during outdoor Shakespeare.

Personally I experienced the same thing years ago when taking my grandmother to see Julia and Julia in a local AMC. They had a Sennheiser IR system but where we were sitting (in the handicap seats) I could tell we were in a shadow of the IR because if she turned her head slightly there was deafening static. She only lasted about 5 minutes before watching the movie without the headphones.


What I'm getting at is - are we fulfilling the need of assisted listening because of some legal requirement but not actually fulfilling the need of the patron?
This also may explain Jay's "no checkouts in 11 years". They just don't want the frustration.

I've said for a long time that hearing assistance mixes need to be their own, unique mix of dialog and the SFX needed to give plot information to the HA user.

Designing for accessibilty should be part of the over-all sound design, not an afterthought. We're smart, creative people, right? And we make theater, right? Why can't we do a better job of delivering the theater experience via design?

Just asking....
 
My own experience with the assistive listening devices is spotty. My hearing after running concerts is not great anymore, and I've appreciated when the devices are available. However, it's never what I'd say a great sound. I find that the IR systems get a little too much static if you're not perfectly aligned with the transmitters. I spent the first half of a broadway show moving the transmitter where I didn't have the white noise competing with softer parts of the show. Loop seemed to be a better signal but as it was stated, the show almost needs to be mixed just for the ALDs. The last show pre-covid that I used one on was The Band's Visit, and because the orchestra wasn't in the pit or on stage, it was elsewhere, everything was mic'd up. It might have sounded great though the mains, but with the ALDs, it blew the singers out of the water.

I'm picky about mixes, mostly because of my hearing loss. I just feel like I don't need to hear quite as much of everything, I need some help with the important parts. My friends who have bad hearing loss don't like the devices because it just makes everything louder, which is also what their hearing aids do, so it's not better, just muddier and louder. It's a lot to ask for the show to have two mixers, but in the age of streaming, maybe that's a direction we need to go. I hate to use automix on desks, but maybe we comp/gate people so it's more of an even sound when the mic is open and let the board mute and unmute the mics according to book. Anyone use one of the automix fuctions often enough to comment on if it would work?
 
I've said for a long time that hearing assistance mixes need to be their own, unique mix of dialog and the SFX needed to give plot information to the HA user.

Designing for accessibilty should be part of the over-all sound design, not an afterthought. We're smart, creative people, right? And we make theater, right? Why can't we do a better job of delivering the theater experience via design?

Just asking....

I always set it up as a discrete mix from the console that is intended to be primarily vocals for speech intelligibility, but for my installed projects what people do with that after I leave is entirely out of my hands. I assume most people just give the same mix they give everywhere else and don't even try to listen to it themselves as a patron would.
 
I completely agree that simply feeding the main master mix to hearing assist is doing a disservice in the great majority of cases. I also suspect it's done more often than it should be.

What I do at my church is send the main mix at a lowish level plus an aux (erm, "mixbus" I guess it's called now) via a matrix. I set the aux up as a postfader send, and put the key vocal microphones in it. The net result is a little of everything and a lot of the main speaker/singer. The main advantage of doing this I see is that, once set up, it's not something that needs to be mucked with generally in real time since the postfader aux sends follow the channel fader changes.

I use a similar setup for feeds for recording, which otherwise sound all out of whack since a not insignificant part of the live sound comes not from the system but from the speakers, singers, and instruments directly...but only for some sources.
 
I completely agree that simply feeding the main master mix to hearing assist is doing a disservice in the great majority of cases. I also suspect it's done more often than it should be.

What I do at my church is send the main mix at a lowish level plus an aux (erm, "mixbus" I guess it's called now) via a matrix. I set the aux up as a postfader send, and put the key vocal microphones in it. The net result is a little of everything and a lot of the main speaker/singer. The main advantage of doing this I see is that, once set up, it's not something that needs to be mucked with generally in real time since the postfader aux sends follow the channel fader changes.

I use a similar setup for feeds for recording, which otherwise sound all out of whack since a not insignificant part of the live sound comes not from the system but from the speakers, singers, and instruments directly...but only for some sources.
I agree with something like this, maybe with a reverse gated room mic in addition.
At the church I mix at, our livestream send is also just an aux that's heavily compressed with an EQ designed to sound "full" on an iPhone and "normal" on a TV or home stereo. Took a while to dial in that curve but it suits us well.

I think something that could be easily reproducible but not just an unaffected split of the Main is good.
While I agree having someone else mixing the Assisted listening, it's not going to work in most small and medium size houses, I just wish there was a guideline or "standard practice" that I could share with local venues that don't make me sound like a salesman.
I also feel like people like my gf's grandpa would be willing to pay $1000s of dollars to get the assisted listening good enough so he could attend again. I'm sure he's not alone in that.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back