Dear editor: I read with interest the electronic the Hearing Review’s Blog article “Letter to the Editor: Jeff Rona Comments on High Quality Monitoring for Musicians with Hearing Impairment published online September 2, 2014. In the letter, Mr Rona, an accomplished film composer, refers to Richard Einhorn’s recent article (August 2014 Hearing Review) and mentions another “cost effective” monitoring system for hearing-impaired listeners that uses the Yamaha n8 which is only a few hundred dollars and also provides a high quality zero-latency listening environment. I would note that the Yamaha n8, heavily discounted, goes for about $800, a bit more than just a few hundred.
In my article about the Personal Sound System 3D, in the same edition as Einhorn’s excellent article (August 2014 Hearing Review), I should have mentioned that a very effective off-(loud)-stage, studio, or live monitoring system can be configured using the PSS-3D components with conventional, high-fidelity earphones (such as the Etymotic Research insert phones mentioned by Einhorn), instead of the expensive Sensaphonics Active Ambient in-ear-monitor system. The Behringer Xenyx 802 mixers and Ultracurve Pro DEQ2496 signal processor of the PSS-3D are available for about $430, and provide ultra-flexible, digital equalization and dynamic-range controls, with zero latency. As with Rona’s system, no computer is required.
This is offered not as a “My dog is better than your dog” item, but simply as another very cost-effective means of configuring off-the-shelf pro-audio equipment to provide hearing-impaired musicians with a high-fidelity, highly tunable, listening environment. —Larry Revit, Revitronix
