Roger™ SoundField
Overview
The classroom soundfield system by Roger™, is a voice amplifier for teachers to improve listening and learning for students and avoid teachers’ vocal strain.1
Roger™ SoundField
The classroom soundfield system by Roger™, is a voice amplifier for teachers to improve listening and learning for students and avoid teachers’ vocal strain.1
Voice amplifier for teachers
Classrooms are lively places with lots of interactive discussions and group collaboration. This is vital for learning, but the noise can make it complex for students to hear everything that is said. Considering that classroom acoustics are usually less than ideal and teachers often speak from a distance, how can we amplify a teacher's voice?
SoundField system
The core of our SoundField system consists of the wireless Roger Touchscreen microphone and the Roger DigiMaster loudspeaker.
Typically worn around the neck, Roger Touchscreen Mic sends the voice from the teacher to the Roger DigiMaster loudspeaker. Roger Touchscreen Mic continuously estimates the surrounding noise and automatically optimizes the volume so that speech remains loud and clear, for improved speech understanding. 2
Positioned in the classroom, the Roger DigiMaster loudspeaker has multiple speakers within the tower. Twelve individual speakers in the Roger DigiMaster 5000, and fifteen in the Roger DigiMaster 7000. By using cylindrical sound dispersion, the teacher’s voice is distributed almost equally through the room. Like all other Roger devices, the system is adaptive, helping the teacher’s voice stay above the noise.
Because helping children at school matters, the new Roger SoundField (V2) comes with many new features:
- New Bluetooth connectivity module for easy connection to multimedia devices used in classrooms. This allows the teacher’s voice from the Roger Touchscreen Mic to be mixed with music or another audio signal from a smart device simultaneously.
- More Bass for a fuller, richer sound quality. Thanks to new high quality loudspeakers, new transducers and new seal.
- MultiTalker Network (MTN) to use up to 35 Roger microphones, such as Roger Touchscreen Mic or Roger Pass-around, in the same MTN Roger network.
- Easy firmware upgrades available through the USB connector, whenever it’s needed.
Benefits of classroom sound system
The auditory network in a child’s brain is not fully developed until around age 15 years. Thus, children listen differently than adults and require a more favorable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).3 With the significant speech-in-noise improvements for normal hearing children of up to 28% at 65 dBA of noise and 50% at 70 dBA over no soundfield, Roger SoundField helps children pay attention, hear and understand the teacher better.2
Benefits of voice amplifier for teachers
Noisy classrooms can result in teachers suffering from vocal strain and leading increased costs due to teacher absences. A study showed that using a Roger SoundField System in a classroom, for just one period of the school day, was enough to improve voice quality and symptoms of dry throat, and reduce fatigue while talking, as well as vocal strain for teachers.1
Classroom audio system
Multimedia devices are commonly used in schools.4 When the Roger Multimedia Hub is used in a network, the audio mixing feature allows a teacher’s voice to be heard simultaneously with an audio signal, e.g. music or video.
Components
Roger™ Touchscreen Mic
This exciting and easy to use wireless teacher microphone is the core component of the Roger for Education portfolio.
Roger™ SF Touchscreen Mic
An intuitive new user interface, this simple-to-use microphone can be combined with one or more Roger Pass-around microphones and transmits exclusively to Roger DigiMaster loudspeakers for the entire class.
Related products
Roger™ Pass-around
This microphone is designed to enhance classroom discussions so that not only teachers, but all students are heard clearly. It is the optimal size for kids and teens.
Roger DigiMaster 5000
The perfect solution for average-sized rooms, this system offers the instant-sound performance.
Roger DigiMaster 7000
The system of choice for larger spaces such as church, auditorium, courtroom. It has the option of being connected in a network of two speakers.
Roger™ Multimedia Hub
This versatile transmitter used in a Roger network features audio mixing which allows a teacher’s voice to be heard simultaneously with an audio signal.
References
1. Cruz, A. D. da, Silvério, K. C. A., Ribeiro, V. V. & Jacob, R. T. de S. (2016). Dynamic soundfield system impact on the teacher’s voice: case report. Revista CEFAC, 18(5), 1260–1270.
2. Wolfe, J., Morais, M., Neumann, S., Schafer, E., Mülder, H., Wells., N., John, A. & Hudson, M. (2013). Evaluation of Speech Recognition with Personal FM and Classroom Audio Distribution Systems. Journal of Educational Audiology, 19, 65-79.
3. Flexer, C. (2002) Rational and use of soundfield systems: An update. The Hearing Journal, 55(8), 10-18.
4. Ofcom. (2019). Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report 2018. Retrieved from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-and-parents-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2018, accessed August 19th, 2019.
5. Knecht, H.A., Nelson, P.B., Whitelaw, G.M., & Feth, L.L. (2002). Background Noise Levels and Reverberation Times in Unoccupied Classrooms: Predictions and Measurements. American Journal of Audiology. 11:65-71.