Stephen O. Frazier, Hearing Loss Support Specialist

Hi Alan - It's not clear to me from your question just what purpose you are trying to achieve by using a smart phone app.   If the hand held or base ham unit used by a HoH operator is broadcasting sound via a loudspeaker rather than to headphones you might look into the possibility of using a smart phone to monitor what's coming over the speaker using one of these apps:

 

1.  Google's Live Transcribe - If the phone's mike or an extension mic was placed near the speaker on the hand held unit or the loudspeaker of a base unit it might provide a text version of what's being broadcast by the speaker and help a HoH user who didn't understand all of the words heard because of ambient background noise or the same coming from the radio transmitter.  It would also give the ham operator a transcript of the conversation.

 

2.  I use an app called AmiHear to turn my smart phone into an ersatz pocket taker.  It has a feature that does seem to reduce some background sounds.  The maker claims their app has a patented noise suppression algorithm that eliminates background noise.  It, too, would provide an aural transcript that can be referred back to if a word or more is not heard or understood.

3.. There's a similar app called Chatable that I've wanted to try but had no luck downloading.  It's available for iPhones and Android devices when you look on the Apple  App store or Google Play via your computer but when I got to the Play site using my Samsung phone with the intention of downloading Chatable the Chatable app is not to be found.  It  gets a 4.3 rating at Apple Apps but only a 3.0 at Play.

I suspect that lower rating is attributable to poorer quality mics and phones  The Sound Print app offers a sound level meter to all iPHone users because they found all iPhones to have suitably sensitive mics but many android phones can't access that feature because the app's maker has found only "some" android phones have adequately capable mics.

 

I would be interested to learn more about  any apps you find that have applications for your purposes.

 

Regards,

 

 

Stephen O. Frazier, Hearing Loss Support Specialist

 

   

                 

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---------- Original Message ----------
From: "Alan Katsura, Moderator, CA Diablo Valley Chapter" <akatsura@...>
To: HLAATech@...
Subject: [HLAATech] Devices or Apps that can assist HOH HAM (amateur) radio operators #communication
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2022 11:10:34 -0800

I am interested in compiling a list of devices and smartphone apps that can assist HAM radio operators with hearing loss. This is for handheld as well as mobile and base units. The environment can have a lot of background noise as we are looking at potential disaster conditions. 
--
Alan Katsura
akatsura@...
Moderator HLAA Tech Group