Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Professional guidance (practice guideline)

Guidelines for Fitting and Monitoring FM Systems

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/asha-2002-fm-guidelines/ · record checked 10 October 2026

  • ASHA Ad Hoc Committee on FM Systems
  • American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA practice policy)

Independent (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the professional association of audiologists and speech-language pathologists; written by its ad hoc committee on FM systems, chaired by Arthur Boothroyd)

Summary

ASHA's guideline for selecting, fitting and checking personal FM systems, including how to set up and measure FM receivers coupled to hearing aids through a neck loop.

Key findings

  • Says that when a personal FM system is considered, the hearing aids must have suitable coupling: direct audio input, or, "if neck loop coupling is to be used, they should have sensitive telecoils", with switch options such as microphone, telephone and both.
  • For electroacoustic checks in a 2-cc coupler, says the hearing aid and neck loop must be in the same relative positions and orientations as on the listener, and that the best way to achieve this is to place the neck loop and hearing aid on a person, preferably the user, or else another person or a manikin.
  • In its verification procedure, asks that the shape and orientation of the loop, and the distance and orientation of the aid relative to the loop, be the same as in actual use, and sets the FM receiver's volume so that a 65 dB SPL, 1 kHz input to the FM microphone gives the same output as the same input to the hearing aid microphone.
  • Notes, citing earlier studies, that some FM-hearing aid combinations produce undesired results, and lists neck loops among the spare accessories users should keep for daily checks.

Limits

Written for personal FM systems used by children and adults, not for venue receivers, and approved by ASHA's Legislative Council in 1999 as a revision of 1994 guidelines; ASHA asks that it be cited as 2002. It sets no field-strength or frequency-response targets for neck loops.

Read the original

www.asha.org/policy/gl2002-00010

Link checked . We link to the original and do not host copies.

Cited in

Cite this source

ASHA Ad Hoc Committee on FM Systems. Guidelines for Fitting and Monitoring FM Systems. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA practice policy). 2002. https://www.asha.org/policy/gl2002-00010/ (accessed 10 October 2026).

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