Does BeHear support directionality?

Sound Focus directionality in BeHear

BeHear ACCESS supports three degrees of directionality, or “sound focus”: Narrow, Wide, and Omni. These settings determine the direction for which to amplify important sounds, relative to the BeHear user’s face.

  • Narrow focuses on the area directly in front of the wearer’s face. It is good for one-on-one conversations in noisy areas.
  • Wide amplifies important sounds in a 180 degree half-circle in front of the wearer. It is good for multi-person conversations in noisy areas.
  • Omni collects important sounds from all directions. It is good for time spent outdoors, or when listening to live music.

To set the desired degree of sound focus, use the W&H BeHear app (which has been paired with your BeHear ACCESS headset), as follows:

  1. When in Personal Hearing mode (i.e., no audio is streaming and there is no active phone call), from the Home menu tap the “equalizer” button at the bottom of the screen.
  2. In the “Current Profile” section, tap the relevant icon.
  3. To save this setting for future use with the current profile (Indoor, Outdoor, Crowd, or Live Music), tap the Save button. Otherwise, the headset will use the system default.

Does the BeHear PROXY need Bluetooth to work?

The primary functions of the BeHear PROXY neck speaker are:

1. To provide a comfortable and convenient way to listen to streamed audio (from a television, smartphone, laptop, gaming console, music player, etc.).

2. To allow you to participate in mobile/video calls.

For these use cases Bluetooth is required, and both “ears free” loudspeaker mode and earphones mode are supported.

A secondary function of the BeHear PROXY is to provide hearing amplification for live conversations and ambient sounds. No Bluetooth is required for this functionality, which is supported in earphones mode only. For best results, however, we recommend personalizing what you hear by performing the Hearing Assessment in the W&H BeHear app, which requires a Bluetooth connection to the smartphone on which it is installed. Upon completion of the assessment your unique hearing profile will be programmed into the BeHear PROXY neck speaker, and the Bluetooth connection will no longer be needed.