Feb 9, 2018 4 min read

Advances in technology have significantly improved the lives of those with hearing disabilities, but even with some of the best hearing aids or cochlear implants, it can still be difficult to hear clearly, especially in places like churches and auditoriums.

St. Louise de Marillac Catholic Church in Upper St. Clair recently installed a hearing loop system to improve the experience hearing-disabled people have during services.

Parishioner Rob Beaver said it’s great listening to Mass when using the new loop system.

“It’s totally clear,” he said. “It’s like the mic is right inside your ear.”

A hearing loop is an assistive listening system that takes a sound source, such as a microphone, and transmits it directly to a user’s hearing aid or cochlear implant without ambient room noise or reverberation.

With the loop system, sound is captured using a microphone or other audio device. The audio signal is connected to a hearing loop amplifier, which generates a current to an induction loop surrounding the area where the audience is located, and produces a magnetic field. The magnetic field is picked up by a t-coil (or telecoil) inside the hearing aid. Sound is delivered directly into the ear canal with the full spectrum of sound frequencies required for intelligibility.

Anyone within the ‘looped’ areas of the church can use the system without headsets or receivers, provided their t-coil has been activated.

For those without hearing aids, or for those who have hearing aids that do not have a t-coil, St. Louise also has four portable receivers that can be used with headsets to help the hearing impaired. St. Louise has been educating parishioners about the new system since mid-January and is already receiving positive feedback.

Longtime parishioner Sam Trentadue was skeptical when he first learned about the hearing loop system, but decided to give it a try. The next day at Mass, Trentadue could not believe the sound.

“I could hear perfectly,” he said. “It was fantastic. For the first time in five years, I was able to understand every word read or said.”

Warren Brown, owner of Brown Audio Service, the company that installed the system at St. Louise, said that while hearing loops have been used for some time in Europe, they are just starting to gain popularity in the United States. To Brown’s knowledge, St. Louise is the first Catholic church in the area to install one.

In Mt. Lebanon, St. Winifred Catholic Church offers neck loops for the hearing impaired where a user wears a device around his or her neck to pick up sound from the receiver. With the neck loop, the number of people able to use the system is limited by the number of devices available, while with the loop system, the number is limited by the number of people who can fit inside the looped area.

The installation of St. Louise’s hearing loop system was an initiative of the church’s disabilities awareness committee. Committee member Pat Maxwell explained that they had been getting feedback that people were having a hard time hearing during Mass and other services. Another committee member, Barb Breier, had some knowledge of hearing loop systems and thought it might work at St. Louise.

The Rev. Joseph Sioli, St. Louise de Marillac’s pastor, said he was grateful to the parish disabilities awareness committees for bringing attention to the technology and for being involved with educating parishioners about the hearing loop.

“Our committee tries to address the needs of people with disabilities,” Maxwell said. “It’s rewarding when you hear from a parishioner that they can now fully participate in the Mass.”