Live Audio System Explained Summary • You should hear every word of the commentary and do not have to be near to the guide. • For hearing impaired guests the audio system can make a huge difference. You need to be able to take out one or both hearing aids if you wear them so do bring their container. • It is better to bring you own earphones with a 3.5mm jack. If not we supply a new pair to you but they are not high fidelity! We continually work to improve our walking tour experience. We introduced an audio system onto Tour No. 2 and Tour No. 3 in 2017. Both tours go through very noisy parts of Birmingham and also visit some quiet locations. How it works The guide wears a microphone and transmitter and guests are given a receiver. The tour commentary is live, but instead of the guide having to shout in noisy places or whisper in quiet locations we can communicate with everyone as if we are right next to them. We encourage ‘tourists’ to bring their own earphones but can supply a new pair which you keep at the end of the tour (£1donation to our charity). Other benefits We piloted our audio system in Autumn 2017 and we had a favourable response with unexpected benefits including: • Hearing impaired guests really appreciated the audio system. One person told us they expected to hear very little of the tour, but replacing their in-ear hearing aid with our earbuds they had to put up with the whole commentary! • When people wander off we can keep in contact - a family decided to go to a doughnut shop recently but we could keep in touch! • Keen photographers often move away from the tour group to get interesting shots - now they can do this and still hear the full tour commentary. Translation into another language By using two channels on our audio system we have got technology and expertise which enables us to present our tours in English and then immediate translation into a second language. This is ideal for overseas groups with a single primary language. On occasions we can also provide this service when we have mixed English and a second language on tour with us. For example 20 German students and their teachers hear the tour directly in English and they get a German translation. We use different systems at the moment as we fine tune this with Travis Touch being for us a clear way forward.