Hearing Support Unit Classroom Audio
A municipal primary school with an integrated hearing support unit equipped 30 rooms with infrared soundfield systems, giving students with hearing aids and cochlear implants a consistent signal above classroom noise.
The Challenge
- Students with hearing assistive technology needed a speech signal 15 dB above the room’s noise floor.
- Open-plan teaching areas and hard surfaces created reverberation that reduced speech clarity.
- Staff turnover meant the system had to work without per-teacher training.
The Solution
- IR-S2 systems were specified for every classroom in the hearing support unit, with speaker height and angle set by acoustic survey.
- IR-500PT pendant microphones were issued per teacher with a numbered charging dock in each room.
- Acoustic panels were added to four open-plan rooms at the school’s request, coordinated with the audio commissioning.
The Result
30rooms with soundfield
15 dBtarget speech-to-noise margin
1microphone format school-wide
The hearing support team reports that students no longer need to be seated in a fixed front-row position, and visiting teachers can use any room without setup instructions.
