Large Area Assistive Listening Systems: Review and Recommendations

7.1 Characterizing Facilities

Recommendations regarding installers of ALS can be facilitated by characterizing the nature of the venues they work in. These can be divided into three levels. The first and most frequent one are the small sites, such as houses of worship, tour sites, funeral parlors, small museums, historic houses, and various kinds of social service agencies. These are facilities in which master electricians and sound engineers are rarely, if ever, employed. The second facility level are medium sites, consisting of such venues as motion picture theaters, courtrooms, museum auditoriums, hotel meeting and conference rooms, and lecture halls. These types of sites may have a technical person on staff to assist in the installation, but not one necessarily skilled in installing sound systems. The third level of sites will almost always have a trained person on staff, either a master electrician or sound engineer to either install, or to assist in the installation, of an ALS. These consist of large legitimate theaters, stadiums, and conference and concert centers. Ordinarily, a manufacturer will offer to send a member of their technical staff to such sites to assist in the installation.

From the comments we received, however, it appears that installation problems occur whether or not the facility has a trained person on staff. The training and skills necessary to install a PA system for normal hearing people, while undoubtedly very helpful, do not directly address the specific listening needs exhibited by people with hearing loss. In any venue, no matter what level, the person installing the ALS must understand both the sound transmission process of every technology as well as the receiver variables that affect people with hearing loss. What this observation suggests is that people who install, or maintain, ALS required specific training focused on the listening needs of hearing-impaired people.