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TV Adapter 3.0

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In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

Yes, I think you misunderstood this, Pui106. Let me clarify.

What the instruction book is talking about is TV volume control (of your Samsung Smart TV) vs the streamed audio from the TV Adapter. The Toslink (optical audio) signal sent from the Samsung TV to your TV Adapter is a fixed volume digital signal via optical laser light. So if you’re watching TV with somebody else, they hear from the speakers of the Samsung TV and you hear from the streamed audio from your TV Adapter to your OPN and these 2 volumes can be adjusted independently. So if your TV partner likes to listen at a very low volume level, he/she can turn the TV speakers volume down, and you still hear the same (louder) volume level from the TV Adapter to your OPN. That is because the Toslink connection sends fixed volume out and not variable volume out that is tied to the TV’s volume. They control their own volume from the TV, and you control your own volume from the OPN.

What I’m talking about is entirely different. It’s between the volume control of your streamed audio from the TV Adapter to your OPN, and the volume control of your live surrounding sound picked up by your OPN’s mics to your receiver. It’s so that you can hear people or sounds around you ON TOP of hearing the streamed audio if that’s what you want. Or not hear surrounding sound (in case it’s just noisy dishwasher or washer/dryer nearby) while you watch TV. If you use the volume buttons on your OPNs, there’s only 1 set of volume buttons, so it controls both. So if the streamed audio is too loud (like in your case), and you want to turn it down using the OPN volume button, you’ll also in tandem, inadvertently, turn down the OPN mic’s volume, even if you don’t want to. So now you can’t hear live people talking around you while watching TV anymore. So what I was telling the folks on this forum is that the iPhone Hearing Devices setting has 2 separate volume control sliders, one for OPN Mic, and one for the TV Box 1 (TV Adapter), that you can play around with to be able to have better control of these 2 volumes independently. If you use RCA connection to the TV Adapter, that’s a third variable audio input you can fiddle with, in conjunction with the 2 volume sliders on the iPhone, to achieve the best balance. But if you use the optical Toslink audio connection to the TV Adapter, that’s a fixed audio input, so you don’t have a third volume control to fiddle with.

Thanks so much for the info. I now understand more how this TV adapter works. I did tune down the volume but as a result, the speech was too soft to understand. I will try something with better audio, such as DVD, later and see if the sound quality would be better.

Also, I am wondering if I can remove the TV program from the hearing aid myself or it has to be done by the audi?

Actually, speech is best understood at monaural, then stereo, and last surround sound. These days sound engineers are big on effects and much of that is in the side channels. Hitachi sound bars and some others have a feature called Clear Speech that emphasizes voice that may be a help when you listen to an ambient sound setup. Setting your TV to stereo rather than surround can improve understanding.

In reply to @pui106

@pui106 said:

Also, I am wondering if I can remove the TV program from the hearing aid myself or it has to be done by the audi?

Good question. I’m not aware of a way to remove the TV Program from the yourself. You may need to have the audi remove it for you. I remember that when my audi did the firmware update on my OPNs it did remove the TV program (which is to be expected).

In reply to @pui106

@pui106 said:

Thanks so much for the info. I now understand more how this TV adapter works. I did tune down the volume but as a result, the speech was too soft to understand. I will try something with better audio, such as DVD, later and see if the sound quality would be better.

Also, I am wondering if I can remove the TV program from the hearing aid myself or it has to be done by the audi?

pretty sure you can only reset your tv adapter, unlinking all devices it connected to. so I good guess is, it will always stay there unless removed in the fitting software.

I have a new question for folks who owns the TV Adapter 3.0. A few times while watching a TV show streamed from the TV Adaptor 3.0, I suddenly hear the sound “come alive”. What I mean is that before the sound is good, but flat, like it’s just monophonic. But when it’s alive, it sounds more stereophonic and has a richness to it. That’s all I can describe. But it would not last long. I may hear this “alive” sound for a minute or two, then one of the OPNs would reboot, and I’m back to the normal flat sound.

I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe the TV Adapter 3.0 tries to stream stereo sound independently to each of the OPN, but for some reason, the OPNs can’t handle the stereo sound and so only accepts the mono sound. But once in a while, the OPNs can accept the stereo sound, so all of a sudden I hear this richness, but it’s short lived because maybe it’s too much information in stereo for the OPNs to handle and overloading the OPNs into the point of a reboot of one of them. Of course, this is pure conjecture on my part.

But I wonder if any folks with the TV Adaptor 3.0 have a similar experience like I have above. I’ve only noticed this a handful of time for the 4+ months I’ve owned the TV Adapter 3.0, and I use it regularly everyday.

I might have experienced what you’re talking about, however I didn’t perceive it as better. Sometimes one of my aids still reboots while streaming from the tv adapter. And sometimes I think the stop syncing with each other and the right side kinda sounds different and I would agree with your more richness, volume kinda experience. However overall it doesn’t really sound clearer and I reboot both aids(taking out battery and then switching them on again).

btw streaming is in real stereo. there’s no mono stream with the OPNs unlike older aids.

^^^ Yes, you’re right that it doesn’t sound clearer. Just more richness, slightly more volume. Whether it sounds better or not really better is just a personal preference, I think.

This “rich” sound effect happened again just now from my TV Adapter 3.0. Then again, about a minute later, one of my OPN1s rebooted. Last time it was the left one that rebooted. This time it was the right one. After the reboot, the sound came back to the normal (non-rich) mode again.

I read online that Oticon licensed the CEVA RivieraWaves technology for use on the OPN. I’m assuming that this is what they use for the TV Adapter 3.0, and possibly for the ConnectClip streamer that was supposed to be out in Q1’17 (but now delayed?).

So apparently they’re dealing with 2 different BLE protocols here, the CEVA one that they license for the TV Adapter, and the Apple propriety for the iPhone/iPad.

In reply to @Volusiano

I have definitely noticed that my TV streamer + OPn performance gets squirrelly on Day 5 of my PowerOne batteries. Without a lot of TV streaming, these batteries will last into the 6th day, but since I do tend to stream a couple hours of TV each night, typically on Day 5, things start to get squirrelly. That’s when I just go ahead and change the batteries.

Not only does the sound quality shift from that “stereophonic” richness you describe to a flatter, 2-dimensional type sound (albeit still streamed directly into my aids!), but the aids will continuously STOP streaming from the TV, and the program will even go from TV streaming back to default Program 1 like some kind of dumb robot taking charge of my aids.

I actually find the Duracell batteries from Costco TIP-TOP! I’ve been getting them for ages now. But occasionally, if I’m on the road, or lazy, or SNOWED IN, I order batteries online at Amazon.com. Then I’ve tried the PowerOne size 312. But IMO this brand is not significantly better than the Duracells!

Reading about all the problems others experience with streaming from the iPhone, tho, makes me wonder if Oticon has this streaming thing down pat, or if they wanted to just ride the coattails of some BIG NAME like Apple. Users like me, who have an Android device and refuse any IoT of things are left high and dry. I did put an email in to Oticon asking about the status of their clip-on streamer, and know from experience it will be close to 3 weeks before I hear back from anyone there.

One thing I CAN say about my old Agil Pros and the Streamer Pro: BEAUTIFUL connection. Every time. No clicks, drop-outs, buzzing, zero! Just 100% reliable streaming into the aids. Now why can’t Oticon do that with a NEWER model of aids? At this rate, their next introduction will be a tin funnel to place in our ears, and we’ll be told to have those on the phone or in the room just YELL LOUDER. >:-/

@Volusiano said:

I have a new question for folks who owns the TV Adapter 3.0. A few times while watching a TV show streamed from the TV Adaptor 3.0, I suddenly hear the sound “come alive”. What I mean is that before the sound is good, but flat, like it’s just monophonic. But when it’s alive, it sounds more stereophonic and has a richness to it. That’s all I can describe. But it would not last long. I may hear this “alive” sound for a minute or two, then one of the OPNs would reboot, and I’m back to the normal flat sound.

I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe the TV Adapter 3.0 tries to stream stereo sound independently to each of the OPN, but for some reason, the OPNs can’t handle the stereo sound and so only accepts the mono sound. But once in a while, the OPNs can accept the stereo sound, so all of a sudden I hear this richness, but it’s short lived because maybe it’s too much information in stereo for the OPNs to handle and overloading the OPNs into the point of a reboot of one of them. Of course, this is pure conjecture on my part.

But I wonder if any folks with the TV Adaptor 3.0 have a similar experience like I have above. I’ve only noticed this a handful of time for the 4+ months I’ve owned the TV Adapter 3.0, and I use it regularly everyday.

I apologize if this query is out of line, but this thread seems to have some experienced knowledgable users of the streamer 3. I have mine in order and am curious how the situation works for when someone without hearing issue is watching TV. Do you put the streamer “in line” with the audio output (say one Dogital optical cable to the input on the streamer, and then one from the output on the streamer to the regular spreader setup?). Does the streamer then broadcast audio to the OPN aids, and the stereo broadcasts audio to the room? Just curious how the setup works when watching TV with my wife or others.
Thanks

@bchearing said:

I apologize if this query is out of line, but this thread seems to have some experienced knowledgable users of the streamer 3. I have mine in order and am curious how the situation works for when someone without hearing issue is watching TV. Do you put the streamer “in line” with the audio output (say one Dogital optical cable to the input on the streamer, and then one from the output on the streamer to the regular spreader setup?). Does the streamer then broadcast audio to the OPN aids, and the stereo broadcasts audio to the room? Just curious how the setup works when watching TV with my wife or others.
Thanks

The TV Adapter 3.0 is designed to co-exist peacefully with how your TV sound is set up so that you can enjoy streaming from it while watching together with other people. Usually you just tap either the analog output or Toslink digital optical output from your TV (if it’s available) and feed it into the TV Adapter 3.0 so it can stream audio to your OPN, and this set up doesn’t change how sound is delivered to your TV speakers at all. The Toslink output from the TV is usually fixed volume, so changing the volume of the TV speakers would not affect the volume of the Toslink output. This way your family can listen to the TV at whatever volume they want and you can listen to it at your own streaming volume. When watching alone then of course you can turn down the TV speakers volume to 0 so you won’t bother anybody else. The analog audio output from the TV usually can be set to be either fixed volume or variable volume, depending on whether your TV has its own analog RCA outputs or not. If not and you have to tap into the headphones mini plug from your TV (if equipped with it), then this headphones output may not be fixed and in this case the volumes can’t be controlled independently anymore.

If you don’t listen from your TV speakers but you feed a Toslink from the TV to your amplifier to a separate sound system, the TV Adapter 3.0 provides a Toslink output so that you can use this to route it to your amplifier because the Toslink output from your TV has already been diverted to your TV Adapter 3.0. So in essence, the TV Adapter 3.0 provide a “through” Toslink connection so that it can share the Toslink audio with your amplifier.

If you don’t have Toslink from your TV and use the TV’s analog audio output to feed to your separate sound system, then it may be a problem because the TV Adapter 3.0 does not provide an analog audio output to enable the “through” feature for analog audio.

Thanks so much volusiano, I do use Toslink audio outputs from my cable box and Apple TV to an Amp. I will put the streamer in line with whichever video source I am using at the time, great to know. My amp also have an output toslink port as well, no idea if that would put out the current audio its playing or not but will give it a shot, then I won’t have to switch the streamer back and forth!

Edited

Yes, I would feed the Toslink from your amp to your TV Adapter 3.0 so that you can hear either source like you said. The only drawback of this is that if you’re watching alone and don’t need to have the amp drive the speakers, the amp will probably have to be “on” anyway to deliver the Toslink audio to the TV Adapter 3.0.

Edited

What are the 2 indicators (Power indicator and TV indicator) showing on your TV Adapter LEDs? Try to look up on page 8 of your TV Adaptor manual to decipher what condition the signals on those 2 LEDs correspond to. If everything is working you should see a green on the Power LED and blue on the TV LED (Toslink inserted and streaming (digital). If it’s green on Power and blinking red on TV, that means the Toslink signal is invalid.

If red on Power and no light on TV indicator, that means that your Adapter has power but is not streaming. I usually see this if my RCA input level is too low for the Adapter low input level threshold to detect. If that’s the case, it would go from 2 greens to a red and blank after a while. To fix this I would need to increase the RCA volume level from my source higher to pass the Adapter threshold to keep it active. Otherwise it would go to sleep.

But the Toslink connection works differently so pay attention to what the 2 LEDs show and decipher what it means from page 8 of the manual. You may assume that it’s losing connection but maybe the connection is good but the Toslink data may not be valid, or maybe there’s no data sent for some reason, cause the Adapter to go on standby.

In reply to @Cervelovan

@Cervelovan said:

I just recently purchased the Oticon OPN which work great. However, the TV adapter pairs with the aids and after a few seconds, loses the connection. What might be the issue here?

I am using the TOSLINK connection.

Thanks

get your adapter and your aids to your fitting guy and let him update the firmware on both.

We bought this for my mother in law and can’t get it to work. I wear aids myself but have no issue with tv. I believe I have everything paired correctly but the box is red light witch means not streaming. Any help would be appreciated.

In reply to @Cervelovan

I spoke with an Oticon service rep (on the phone). She said this was a known problem. She suggested bluetooth would not be dropped if the tv sound was switched to mute. It does work for me then (bluetooth not dropped); however, I’ll be dropped by my spouse. I’ve been looking for info on an Oticon solution for this and haven’t yet found one.

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