When you have hearing loss, it can sometimes feel like attending a party underwater: You can see everyone—and facial reactions can be a tipoff that someone told a ribald joke or shared something sad, important, or meaningful—but you can’t always quite hear punchlines, directions, or other communications.

Of course, hearing aids are a powerful tool to combat this, and improve your ability to hear. There are some people who may not benefit entirely from hearing aids alone due to the severity hearing loss.

That’s where Multi Mic can help—the person speaking wears a small microphone, and their speech is transmitted via Bluetooth directly into your hearing aid. Using them can make a significant difference.

Use of Multi Mic (remote microphone systems) provides substantial improvement in speech recognition over hearing aids alone.

Resound Multi Mic.

The ReSound Multi Mic connects directly to any ReSound wireless hearing aid and extends the hearing range by up to 25 meters (80 feet) in clear line of sight.

The Resound Multi Mic also doubles as a table microphone, connects with loop and FM systems, and has a mini-jack input to turn your hearing aids into headphones.

How does Multi Mic work?

Simply put, a Multi Mic is a separate device that is used to bring the [sound] signal from an outside source directly to the hearing aid user.
This mic is small—it can clip to the speaker’s lapel—and pairs wirelessly via Bluetooth to your hearing aids. This helps cut through noise and distance to stream voices right to a hearing-impaired person’s aided ears.

Place it on a table, and the Multi Mic turns it into a table microphone making it possible to hear what everyone around it is saying. The Multi Mic has a mini-jack input for streaming audio from virtually any device with a headphones output.

Dramatically reduces background noise.

Using a Multi Mic helps improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) according to one small study involving adults and children with bilateral hearing loss. That’s important: The signal is what you want to hear (it’s the person talking to you at the restaurant table) and the noise (the background sounds of other tables’ conversations and clinking silverware) is what can get in the way of you hearing.

The problem gets worse when people are further away. (Distance, along with background noise, are factors that make hearing more challenging.)

Multi mics accentuate the signal, but not the noise. The signal you want to hear, like the person talking, either holds the Multi Mic, or clips it to them when speaking, so that the sound goes directly into the hearing aid user’s hearing aids with less outside interference. That is, they cut down on background sounds and boost the person you want to hear.

When to use a Multi Mic?

They are particularly useful in a restaurant or group settings, anywhere there’s a lot of background noise. You can give the Multi Mic to someone speaking at a restaurant or in a conference room—or even your yoga teacher or another instructor-type setting, so that the hearing aid user can hear more directly and clearly.

If you have a child with hearing loss, are incredibly helpful at school and at home. Multi Mic boost your child’s ability to hear more words, and they also improve things like attention, confidence and independence.

Drawbacks to note.

You may need to visit your audiologist to properly pair hearing aids with a remote mic.

And all that wireless streaming cuts down on battery life. Say you have lithium-ion rechargeable hearing aids: those would usually hold a 30-hour charge, but with wireless streaming, it drops to 24 hours.

Multi Mic’s are yet another thing to carry around. You have to have a separate device to take with you places to get the benefit.

Benefits far outweigh the drawbacks!

While yes, there are some inconveniences to Multi mics. The positives far outweigh the negative. In situations where clarity and understanding are an issue, Multi Mics are a blessing.
References

1. ReSound Multi Mic – hearing aid microphone | ReSound
2. Remote microphones and hearing aids, Healthy hearing
3. Frontiers in Neuroscience | www.frontiersin.org 2 April 2021 | Volume 15 | Article 643205, Effects of MM on Speech Recognition in SNHL
4. Lewis DE. Assistive devices for classroom listening: FM systems. Am J Audiol 1994;70−83.
5. Chen J, Wang Z, Dong R, Fu X, Wang Y, Wang S. Effects of Wireless Remote Microphone on Speech Recognition in Noise for Hearing Aid Users in China. Front Neurosci. 2021 Apr 12;15:643205.