FM stereo hearing aid question.

Why on earth use FM in this process? Hearing aids are essentially amplifiers, albeit very selectively frequency dependant. Noise suppression and so forth using DSP is already built in to modern units. A 'bionic' hearing aid, for the profoundly deaf, actually 'decodes' the audio and stimulates nerve endings in the ear itself rather than sending sound into the ear.

If you are just after a transmitter to get audio from an electronic device (TV, stereo, whatever) to a person some distance away, this is already done in stereo (my mother-in-law has one) using a stereo FM transmitter and receiver.

If you have a stereo FM headphone you need a (single) stereo headphone transmitter - you can't 'multiplex' two mono FM transmitters and receive them on your stereo receiver.

Cheers.

Ken

I've had a similar idea as a method for overcoming the mono sound for the FM systems used in hearing aids. I use the TelCom from Phonak which takes the stereo connectors from my home receiver, but then broadcasts the audio over FM in mono since both ears pickup the same signal. There isn't a right and left on the FM receivers for my hearing aids. I'm pretty sure there is a way to set the receivers on the hearing aids to receive a different frequency. Now I would just need the TelCom or some other FM transmitter to broadcast Left to one frequency, and Right to another. Having FM is great, but not having Stereo for music and movies is a bummer. (And yes, I realize that I'm probably trying to make these things do more than they were originally intended, and that I could just go and use my regular headphones if I really wanted.)

I haven't spent enough time on the matter, but do know that you can buy small transmitters for pretty cheap and tune them yourselves.

Dane Ashworth

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phonak Savia BTE's with FM and all of the gadgets ELI Bluetooth Mobile Phone Adapter Audiovox SMT5600 Bluetooth Smartphone

I have a Sony headset that is "wireless" stereo. It uses IR to transmit from source to phones.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Here's one cheap way for FM stereo.

2 Lobeman FM earclip receivers. $14.95 ea 2 FM bugs sold on Ebay for about $20 ea.

Tune Left for one freq and the Right for another freq.

Certainly under $100

Seinheiser (I've spelled that wrong) had an IR system decades ago, and I think it's their system (at least what they make nowadays) that is often sold as an aid to the deaf.

But they use a separate receiver, and then feed the signal into the hearing aids via inductive coupling. Most hearing aids have an inductive pickup as standard, for use with telephones, so basically placing a flat coil betweeen the aid and the head couples signal into it.

The IR receiver has just a standard headphone jack on it, so it can be used with headphones or the coupler.

Use a stereo IR system with two couplers, and you get stereo.

I wonder what is in the original poster's hearing aid. I find it hard to believe that there's an actual radio receiver, so likely the "wireless transmitter" is an audio amplifier feeding a loop, which allows inductive pickup in the hearing aid. That will never be stereo, since there's no way of differentiating between the audio loop on the left channel and the audio loop on the right channel.

Michael