Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Using the FM with the N5: Revisited

I've been meaning to post an update about this for a while, especially since I've noticed a lot of people have found my blog when they were searching for information about using the Nucleus 5 with the FM adapter. Well, when I posted before, I had no personal experience using it since I had used the MyLink neck loop which, despite its ugliness/cumbersomeness, worked pretty well with only occasional computer interference. Since Cochlear was sending free adapters, we went ahead and ordered two and the school district provided the boots to go with them. I must say I had high expectations, and was hoping that any interference issues would be alleviated since the T-coil was no longer in use.

Not to be Miss Debby Downer here, but I had a horrible experience! I couldn't get through more than a half day with them.. The interference was so awful that I would only occasionally get reception when my head was tilted a certain way and the teacher stood in a certain spot, and that was only in one ear! After dealing with non-stop static for three hours, I gave up and asked for the neck loop back. The school district audiologists didn't bother to troubleshoot and pretty much just said, "Oh well, we tried." It's completely possible that with some adjustments to the FM channels it would have worked fine, but I don't know since I didn't get the chance to try it out. I'm not saying you shouldn't try out the boots with Euro adaptors on the N5 (as long as you can try before you buy!), but if you have small children using them, please be sure they're not just hearing static all day! It was the most terribly unpleasant experience, and I would hate to think that there are some toddlers out there who aren't able to explain what they are hearing that are having to deal with it too!