Assisted Listening Systems: What do you use?

josh88

Remarkably Tired.
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It looks like its been a few years since this has come up so in the hopes of being up to date:

We're in the process of starting to look for a new hearing assist system for our venue. What we have right now is an old Williams R7 setup being fed via my page feed. It still works but there are a lot of worn out packs, some damage to the base station and while it could all be repaired, the plan is to replace with something newer.

Looking to get away from 9volt batteries, probably wanting to stick with an FM transmitter, but not locked into that. We're looking at Telex Soundmates, Listentech, and Williams again as well as a few others I hadn't heard of til doing some googling.

Just wondering what other systems people are using and if there are any systems you love or you hate. Also I keep seeing 2012/2010 as the latest updated table as far as ratios of seats to receivers go, does that seem correct?
 
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The last time I did an ADA refresh in a venue was 2015. We had really great success installing Williams PPA T45 transmitters in 7 different venues. It was so good that two other theaters in town ended up having to switch over to the T45 because the older subscribers we had in common kept complaining about how much better our ALD's sounded!

The big thing I like about the modern Williams Sound stuff is A. You can get audio into it multiple ways (Do I really need a Dante enabled or AES-3 ALD Tx? Probably not...but it's cool that it exists!) B. It's bonkers how much headroom they have. I end up having to keep a 20dB pad on the line-in at all times because they clip easier than most devices (there is a built-in pad though!), but once you stop the Transmitter from clipping, the receivers get quite loud and they do it cleanly C. It actually sounds decent -- you will want a remote antenna for the thing, I really don't like how precarious the 8' whip antenna out the top of the transmitter is, plus it's nice to be able to rack mount things.

And while I'm no expert, and clearly not doing work on ADA systems every day, we followed the 2010 spec in 2015.
 
I noticed they had changed antennas on the newer ones. Mine has a stubby little guy that actually manages to fit in the rack it's in.

One question I haven't seen answered anywhere is can I keep my old receivers and have them work with the new transmitter? (assuming they can be tuned to the same FM frequency and are backwards compatible). Or if I get a new receiver that has an output could I send that into the old receiver and use both systems so that I can meet the ADA requirements for numbers and get away with only buying a few newer, nicer receivers since they never get used.
 
Seconded for the Williams PPA T45. Most of the new venues around us are spec'ing them and have been satisfied by their performance.
 
I noticed they had changed antennas on the newer ones. Mine has a stubby little guy that actually manages to fit in the rack it's in.
The new units come with a half-wave antenna (6'). The remote antenna can mount to a C-Clamp, because 6' horizontal is much easier to hide in a booth than 6' vertical. Do note that it uses 75 Ohm cable (I just use RG-59 from the video rig) as opposed to usual 50 Ohm RF Cable.

One question I haven't seen answered anywhere is can I keep my old receivers and have them work with the new transmitter? (assuming they can be tuned to the same FM frequency and are backwards compatible).

Not a clue, but Williams Sound support is pretty fantastic...I don't remember why I had to call them, but I remember it being a pleasant phone call. Their site claims backwards compatibility (to that end, they have a single unified Frequency Chart for all products for all time), but it also says that the R7 is pre-tuned and fixed-frequency. If you find out it is backwards compatible, might be worthwhile to grab a cheap frequency counter to rip the frequency out of the thing if you don't already know it.
 
Not a clue, but Williams Sound support is pretty fantastic...I don't remember why I had to call them, but I remember it being a pleasant phone call. Their site claims backwards compatibility (to that end, they have a single unified Frequency Chart for all products for all time), but it also says that the R7 is pre-tuned and fixed-frequency. If you find out it is backwards compatible, might be worthwhile to grab a cheap frequency counter to rip the frequency out of the thing if you don't already know it.

I'll have to double check everything, the unit I have has dipswitches to set a frequency on the back of it. It's old enough that they're the older boxy versions of the R7 so they are a little different from the last version they were making before discontinuing it. I'll have to dig up a manual soon and take a look. Being as old as it is, thats long gone. Thanks for the heads up on that chart.
 
If new receivers to avoid 9V batteries is the quest, you might be able to use new Williams receivers with the old transmitter.
 
If new receivers to avoid 9V batteries is the quest, you might be able to use new Williams receivers with the old transmitter.

It's just one goal and a minor one. Rechargeable would be nice but I also always have a stock of AA's. 9 volt's we'd have to buy specifically for this purpose. The gain knob on the transmitter is broken, which I can mitigate with how much I feed the box with and I could fix a lot of the issues if I have time, but there's a donor and a board that at the moment at least is set on replacing everything. We'll see what they say when I present everything to them, there's a lot they don't know about the whole system and ADA rules.
 
As always, prep your sales pitch before giving them a number, even if they're willing buyers. :)
Luckily all of the staff that are making the actual decisions on this are all on the same page and we can just lay out all the information. We've been working on a half million dollar shell install for the past year, so we're all just in the "lets pick a couple options, lay out the cost, and what we need, and it will be whatever it is to get it done"
 
I cannot say enough about the customer service and quality of equipment I received from Listen Technologies.
 
Looks like we're down to Williams and Listen as the two options we're going to price out. For anybody that comes along this and has a similar set up, Williams just confirmed that the old R7 Receivers DO tune so that they can be used with the newest T45 transmitter they offer. So you CAN supplement your stock or buy only a handful of the better receivers and keep the older receivers as backups and to hit your required number.

edit: AND the newer R37 receivers can work with the OLD T4 Transmitters. For that matter. Listen devices can also be used with williams transmitters and you can mix and match some of this gear but differences in companders means quality will be better if you don't intermix.
 
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One thing I will say about the R37 is that the earbuds that come with them are absolute garbage. Be ready to replace those with some actually functioning earpieces. Their EAR 042 dual buds are pretty good, though at the request of some of our more .... discerning patrons, we also picked up some some full-muff, and stethoscope-style earpieces.
 
One thing I will say about the R37 is that the earbuds that come with them are absolute garbage.

You mean the sort of earbud with the ring around it? for lack of a better way to put it? I noticed they were sort of odd looking. Our plan was already to buy a handful of more comfortable options to use with the handful that actually get used. We have a fairly old audience base and I'm actually hoping with some more signage these are used more often.
 
We have Telex and Williams in use here...

I like the Williams units.

Last season we had around 3.6 million visitors.

We had 4 requests for hearing assistance.

These people were grateful in a way I hadn't seen in a long time.

It was like giving a drink of water to a thirsty person.
 
Do these assistive listening units need to have any features?
I've worked in a space that had a Nady unit (I know, not my choice) and never was there a complaint.
In a large hotel chain, they had Telex units. They never worked well and I ended up figuring out some wired headphone amp option when assisted listening was requested. No one really cared in this situation because the client is required by law to not pay for assisted anything.
Also worked in a space with a Listen Tech system. Seemed to work well but never had anyone use it that I know of.
 
No features needed really. We're probably going with the Williams System because we can keep using our old receivers to meet the number we need and the quotes we've had are significantly lower than the Listen Tech equivalent. And they take rechargeable AA batteries meaning we could always easily replace them with regular or new rechargeables.
 
No features needed really. We're probably going with the Williams System because we can keep using our old receivers to meet the number we need and the quotes we've had are significantly lower than the Listen Tech equivalent. And they take rechargeable AA batteries meaning we could always easily replace them with regular or new rechargeables.

If you're going rechargeable, and have the space, I'd suggest the drop-in charger for the receivers. It makes keeping them charged much more quick and easy.
 
If you're going rechargeable, and have the space, I'd suggest the drop-in charger for the receivers. It makes keeping them charged much more quick and easy.
For sure that's what we're going with. Pop them out when needed, drop them back in after the show and if something happens I can put regular batteries in or replace with new rechargeables down the line easily. They've got cases with the charger and 12 receivers and 2 of those gives me exactly how many I need plus one extra.
 
I cannot say enough about the customer service and quality of equipment I received from Listen Technologies.

^^^^^ This, all day long. Phenomenal support and the product is rock-solid. mike
 

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