Assisted Listening Systems: What do you use?

[epimetheus]

We're using the Williams Sound Hearing Hotspot Server and smartphone app for ALD and SAP (Spanish translation) purposes. We also have a Listen Tech FM system from the install package that we still have in service if needed. The Williams Hearing Hotspot system is nice in that you can have up to 6 feeds on the app. We're using one for our program feed and one for Spanish translation. You could also use the additional channels for IFB, page, and cue mixes. The latency is low enough that it's comfortable to listen to. That was surprising for a wifi based system.

 

[macsound]

Just got some info from a chuch over the weekend that needed their Assisted listening system looked at. Apparently it was never re-wired after some house cleaning happened.
I was thinking of making sure there was a mic in the house that also fed into the assisted listening for times when no amplification was used.

Question: Is it common to use external processing to combine the board feed and house mic or add the house mic into the console and only have it pre-fade output to the assisted listening aux?

In the old days, I would usually Y the mic used to feed the dressing rooms after a rather hefty compressor and EQ that seemed sufficient for the dressing room monitors and the limited bandwidth of the assisted listening, but not sure if that's still the norm with digital audio consoles.

 

[MNicolai]

@macsound, I always spec systems with ALS processing in the external DSP. Console feed into the DSP is a dedicated mix with vocals only (most patrons who need ALS are looking for improved speech intelligibility, not personal headphones of a concert). DSP ducks the house mic down temporarily whenever a vocal mix is coming from the console to give priority to speech content.

Not that you can't replicate that functionality in the console, but I only put the house mic on the console if someone wants to record off of it but you don't want to ever risk routing that into the main PA. I also design my systems with 2 modes, one that is reliant on the console being turned on and another that isn't. I need the ALS and DSP to be independent of the console so the system works continuously whether the console is on or off, and whether someone remembers to set up a dedicated ALS mix or no.

You can pre-compress the ALS feed if you like but most ALS transmitters are designed to squash the signals themselves. I would earball it first with some content that has a wide dynamic range and decide if you think it's necessary or not.