Surround Town

Surround Town is the next best thing to being there. With Surround Town, you have the ability to simulate a real world situation for the hearing aid client. Surround Town is available with live hearing aids or in simulate mode and is accessed by clicking Show Surround Town from the Tools menu. Surround Town is not a separate module or software package but is integrated directly into Inspire. This integration allows you to simulate real world situations while having access to all adjustments for the hearing aid so that changes can be made in immediate response to the client's needs for virtually any situation. To fully experience Surround Town, you will need a 5.1 stereo sound card and 5.1 stereo speakers placed around the hearing aid user. See Calibration for details.

To experience Surround Town, place the hearing aid client in the center of the 5.1 speaker array and click Show Surround Town from the Tools menu. The graphs will be replaced by scenes you can select depending on the needs of the hearing aid client. In each scene, the hearing aid client is represented by the green character and there are a variety of elements surrounding the green character.

Each element that has a sound will change color when you move the mouse over the element. Each element is activated by a single mouse click and once active will animate and play a specific sound. The individual element can be turned off by clicking on it again or by clicking the Stop button which will stop all active elements. In addition to your ability to turn on and off elements in the scene, you can change the position of the listener in each scene by moving the mouse around the scene until the mouse shape changes to a small version of the green character and then click to move the listener to the new location. Sounds will automatically adjust around the hearing aid client to reflect the change in position (e.g., the piano will sound like it’s on the other side of the room).

The volume of each element has been pre-set and will be appropriate if you have calibrated the 5.1 speaker array. If desired, the volume can be adjusted on each element once the element is active by moving your mouse over the element to make a volume control appear. Changes to these volume controls will not be saved once Inspire is closed.

Elements can be muted at any time by clicking the Mute button .

Each scene can be expanded/contracted to hide/view the adjustment controls and navigation bar and provide a full screen view of Surround Town by clicking on the Expand button located in the bottom left corner of each scene.