Review: Contacta RF Assistive Hearing System with Dante

Until Contacta found new distribution in Australia, I’ll confess that our paths hadn’t previously crossed. But I had the opportunity to chat with one of the Directors of Contacta at the ISE show in Barcelona earlier this year. Andrew Thomas described how Contacta is a family business, established by his father, Bert, in the UK in the early ’70s. He and his brother took it on after Bert’s passing in the 1980s and they’ve been hard at it ever since, more recently welcoming other members of the family into the business’s operations. Contacta is a specialist assistive hearing manufacturer, marketing product in the three current popular platforms of how to crack the hearing assist nut, namely, inductive loops, infra-red and FM wireless. It has a long history of making solid, reliable product with plenty of repeat business with installers who like the cut of the Contacta jib.

I’ve had a look at the Contacta FM wireless offering. Mostly my experience has been with the ListenTech take on this format and the Contacta system ticks all the same sort of boxes: a transmitter talks to wireless packs which will themselves take any minijack earphone or a lightweight supplied headphone. There is of course a recharge bay available for the receivers, including a 24-bay ‘suitcase’ solution.

ON TRANSMIT

A quick tour of the transmitter will tell you most of what you need to know about the system. The front panel is mostly self explanatory but there are a couple of interesting features worth noting.

There are three main modes of operation that you can select from the Setting display. The first is the primary Transmitter mode, the second is a Transmitter plus Interpreter mode and the third is Interpreter Only mode.

For interpreters, there’s a headset jack on the front panel. Plug in a headset and you can adjust the mic level via the front pot once you’ve selected the correct source via the push button next to it.

The main feed is sourced from the combi input jack on the rear, which can switch between mic, line and mic with phantom power. But you can mix in another auxiliary input which can come via the RCA inputs on the rear or via a Bluetooth input.

Also around the back is a USB-C port for firmware updates and on this version a Dante port. A Dante-enabled version is a no-brainer for many installs and most welcome.

The receiver packs are solidly built and a sweetspot size and weight that ensures they don’t weigh heavily on clothing but aren’t easily taken home by absent-minded punters.