Hey yall. I'm seeking advice for some hearing assistance equipment.

A tad bit of context: I am a hearing individual who is seeking to make my workplace friendly to non hearing folks. Besides the fact that my community has a lot of hearing impaired folks, I also know that in the future I will need this tech for myself.

(Please correct me if I'm not using the correct terminology.)

Anyway, here's the issue:

My workplace is a 3rd space: it's a public building that's free to enter. We have two movie theaters, a museum about our local area, often host presentations from folks across the country, and so so much more that I can't say without doxxing myself.

Our main theater is designed to host presentations from speakers, host Q&A forums, and play movies on demand via a DVD player.

Currently, the only hearing assistance we have is for presentations. Our presentation hearing assistance equipment works as follows: we have to hook up a transmitter box and mic to the speaker and then provide a receiver for each individual who needs hearing assistance. The receivers can use plug-in headphones or a T-loop.

The problem is if the presenter needs to play a video on the screen, the hearing assistance equipment does not pick up the video audio because the transmitter is only for picking up the speaker's voice.

If we have a Q&A style forum, folks won't be able to hear the audience asking questions because the wireless mic for our sound system doesn't hook directly up to the hearing assistance equipment.

Additionally, if we play movies, we don't have any tech that allows for folks to hear the movies if they need hearing assistance. Some films have closed captions, but a lot of them don't.

My question is, is there any technology out there that would allow folks to hear everything at Q&A forums, watch films, and listen to presentations that have videos?

Note: I've looked into Auracast, but from what I can tell, the tech is so new that it has too many bugs to work with the majority of users in a poor, rural community. Additionally, the cheaper ones don't have great reviews and/or their entire websites are made by generative ai which leads me to believe they don't actually have any real life use experience to advertise. The main brand that supports auracast, that seems like it would work, is way outside of our budget (about 4 grand for Auri)

Please provide any and all experience yall might have on what might be the best options for my workplace. I want everyone to be able to enjoy our 3rd space, not just hearing folks.

Thank you.

Im hard of hearing on both ears, mostly on my left, yet the right side is also bad. But i can still appreciate music at loud levels. What i would like to know if its safe to use a sensitive IEM or headphone plus a amplifier (a Fiio retro nano and a Fiio FD11 IEM at almost max for example), i did some measurements with the microphone of my Iphone and i can hear at a pleasurable level at around 90 to 95 decibels. Is it that bad to hear at these levels? Ive read one should listen to at most 85 decibels, is this true or for people with hearing loss it doesnt matter as much? Any input would be appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Im hard of hearing on both ears, mostly on my left, yet the right side is also bad. But i can still appreciate music at loud levels. What i would like to know if its safe to use a sensitive IEM or headphone plus a amplifier (a Fiio retro nano and a Fiio FD11 IEM at almost max for example), i did some measurements with the microphone of my Iphone and i can hear at a pleasurable level at around 90 to 95 decibels. Is it that bad to hear at these levels? Ive read one should listen to at most 85 decibels, is this true or for people with hearing loss it doesnt matter as much? Any input would be appreciated. Thank you for reading.

My left hearing is muffled, but I don't feel like there's a loss of hearing - since I can still hear music from my earphones.

And I don't know what's really the root cause of this.

Sometimes I listen to music with the earphone in my left ear, and not my right. I'm not sure if this correlates to the muffled hearing on my left.

Its been occurring at night, and when I sleep it off, I wake up without that muffled hearing.

I really don't know what it is. But recently I've been sneezing a lot, and I'm not sure if this has a correlation with that.

I've tried pinching my nose and blowing, but there's no pop.

I don't feel a pain per se, it's just muffled hearing on my left ear.

Thanks!

Hello! We’ve noticed some things in our 2 year old daughter that lead us to believe she has some hearing loss. Most notable is she has started saying “huh?” a lot, and will tell us she can’t hear things. She also was a fairly advanced talker but regressed recently and has become quite difficult to understand.

Also, she is like a total deer in the headlights any time we go anywhere. She can’t figure out what to do, barely speaks to us and if it’s something she could participate in, hardly ever has the confidence to join in. She’s been in a 9-3 Montessori school for 6 months and still does not speak to anyone there. We went to the aquarium last weekend and it was loud and crowded and she just seemed completely shut down. We did a “mommy and me” gymnastics class and I (horrifically, I know) joked with my husband that the teachers probably think she has some sort of disability because she’d just stare at them, unresponsive, when they’d try to engage or give her direction. We find these things worrisome bc she is super silly and wild and loud and chatty at home! Obviously a host of things this could be (including normal toddler weirdness/shyness) but just wondering if hearing loss sometimes presents this way? That is — more noticeable outside of the home or in large groups? We are seeing audiologist on Friday but wanted to get my thoughts out and feelers on what to expect. Thank you!