A hearing loop assistive listening system (ALS) allows those with  manual equipped hearing aids and CIs to access the system with the simple touch of a button – no need to borrow a receiver and headset and then return it after the event.  There’s no chance that their hearing aids might be damaged or lost when removed to wear the headset.

If they use the combination Mic/Telecoil setting on their hearing aids they can still hear and talk with others while connected to the loop – something that’s difficult to do when wearing a headset – or they can go strictly to the telecoil setting (turning off the hearing aid microphones) and thus eliminate most background noise and reverberation.

The headset or ear buds loaned with an Fm or IR ALS are really just miniature loudspeakers placed over or in your ears.  They cannot customize sound to match your audiogram whereas digital hearing aids and CIs are miniature computers that customize the sound so that those frequencies you don’t hear well get more amplification thus making words clearer and easier to identify.  This is particularly important for those with a higher frequency hearing loss which makes it difficult to hear consonants.