OTH, if you can stream the phone call directly to your ’s, it can be a lot clearer that trying to listen to it through a classic landline because, if necessary, you can turn off your external HA mics entirely-does functionality typically do that? There have been whole threads on this forum on how to set up a classic landline or a PBX phone (think I recall) to stream directly to one’s HA’s. Don no longer seems to be with us, unfortunately (hope COVID is not involved) but if I recall correctly, he was one of the forum experts on getting streaming from classic landline phones. I may be exaggerating but usually telecoil is not in the main model of most HA brands these days - you have to buy a special model that has it and takes a larger battery (usually) because telecoil functionality costs HA battery, whereas BT LE is more energy-efficient so there is an advantage there - and with the ReSound Quattro’s and a Multi -Mic, I can have telecoil whenever I want it for churches, auditoriums, etc., without taxing my HA’s any more than with BT streaming as the telecoil pickup in in the Multi Mic so the cost of the telecoil comes at the expense of the battery there, not the batteries in my HA’s, particularly.
Hi. I have good success with semi open superlux hd681 headphones. I use them for playing guitar along to cd’s / apple music and they do the trick pretty nicely (and only £25 too).
I turn on the music programme on my aids have them set at normal volume.
Thankyou, Jim. I had to Google BTLE - Bluetooth Low Energy! The very latest thing.
I have no Bluetooth of any kind and hesitate because with music my priority (and pipe organ, at that!) I’m not sure that transducers are really up to the task. Maybe I am wrong about that?
Currently I listen to music playback through big speakers and subs, with earmoulds slightly dislodged to let the bass squeeze past. Guess I could not involve Bluetooth in that mixture because of processing delay.
Yes, there are one or more threads on the forum about how true music aficionados prefer music through headphones or big speaker systems vs. hearing aids. Sound is not one-dimensional, though, and there are many aspects to listening via in a battery-limited device. d’ Wooluf is nurturing a thread devoted to the forthcoming promise of Bluetooth Low Energy Audio, which is something entirely different from plain old BT LE (the people who cooked up the nomenclature are crazy!). LE Audio and the Future of Hearing
The How To Geek site, which usually has very good information, has a post from earlier this year laying out why BT LE Audio is important. They might have it a bit wrong, my understanding is that with BT LE Audio you can either get much longer battery life in your listening device or if you are willing to sacrifice battery life, a higher bitrate and better audio than with the classic SBC BT codec - but I may have it wrong and perhaps BT LE Audio can’t do aptx audio, which is the best audio codec? Someone like @d_Wooluf would have to straighten my meandering vague understanding here out: The How To Geek article claims classic high-bitrate BT audio is still likely to be better sound fidelity than the upcoming LE Audio standard: What Is Bluetooth LE Audio, and Why Will You Want It? (howtogeek.com)1
Latency is all relative - if there is no video to compare it, too, and all your audio is coming from the same source any built-in latency shouldn’t be a problem. BT devices using the proprietary Qualcomm aptx protocol can have latencies as low as about 50 ms, about the range that humans can’t detect the latency, but I don’t know of any ’s that support that protocol. The Phonak Paradise HA’s?
Edit_Update: BT SIG comparison of SBC (classic BT audio) to (LE Audio codec)
The speaker says a 5.0 rating is PERFECT audio reproduction, 4.0 is excellent, so the LC3 audio quality is supposed to be very high indeed at a reproduction rate of 1.5 Mbps uncompressed sound. From third video down to the right on following page: LE Audio and the Future of Hearing | Bluetooth® Technology Website1
my understanding is that with BT LE Audio you can either get much longer battery life in your listening device or if you are willing to sacrifice battery life, a higher bitrate and better audio than with the classic SBC BT codec
The longer battery life is pretty much given I think. About double what you get with Classic Audio/SBC. With bitrate, it’s not so much about more or less but about how much bang you get for your bitrate buck. There’s a graph that shows subjective ratings of audio quality for and SBC at increasing bit-rates. You can find it here: LE Audio | Bluetooth® Technology Website1. LC3 at low bitrate (apparently) sounds better than SBC at more than double the bit-rate. I suspect that you and I probably couldn’t tell the difference. I also suspect that audiophiles with golden ears would turn their noses up at both.
Hello, d_Wooluf. With apologies, I’m trying to answer Jim here but can’t induce the site to do it. So…
Hello Jim. Brilliant information again, thankyou. All followed up. The Wirecutter/NYT A/B music test shows up the shortcomings of mp3 compared with wav (apparent enough run through AptX, which probably confirms that’s a good codec just as you say), though I would hope that hearing aid developers will trial more challenging music than that.
Classical music, piano in particular, seems extra vulnerable when it comes to lossy encoding - detail in the low-level ‘shadows’ falls away into a crumble. It’s slight these days but always there. Sorry to ‘turn up my nose’ but I remember truly perfect analogue from the BBC before anything at all, studio links and recording included, changed to digital!
Hello d-Wooluf. I really do apologise. I tried three times to get my response to lodge under Jim’s post and in the end clicked it to you, thinking the thread to be the same. I need to learn better navigation! Not upset by the ‘upturned nose’, by the way: I absolutely confess to having that attitude towards some sound reproduction though I cannot claim to have golden ears. Tarnished brass, more like.
With best wishes, Howard.
Resurrecting this old old thread as I am having issues with headphones and my Oticon More .
I prefer to keep my on while using over the ear headphones like many others in this thread who have commented. I was using Airpod Max up until recently… i got tired of them being so heavy. I switched to Bose QC45 and notice that I’m getting a squelching sound like micro feedback when it’s playing music. At first I thought it was feedback but if I"m not playing any music, i don’t hear the squelching at all–it’s only when i’m playing music.
I found it can vary by headphone. I use Phonak Lumities with titanium molds, one closed one active vent (recently upgraded from the Paradise with one open, one closed plastic molds) and have a bunch of headphones. My new hearing aids (and molds) seem way more prone to feedback with headphones.
I used to have Sennheiser Momentum 3’s and they worked great, upgraded to Momentum 4’s and am getting a lot more feedback, from experimenting I think the ANC causes issues.
Also have a bunch of other headphones, mostly open back as they seem to have less feedback issues and sound great. I’ve found my Drop Sennheiser 6XX can give me some feedback issues. I have Hifiman Sundaras, HE-R7DX and Deva Pro wireless, all of these sound great and I have had virtually no feedback issues.
I think it’s a case of finding a combination that works for you and your hearing aids. I did work with my audi to create a ‘Headphone’ program for my aids, but that dials things back too much and sounds bad to me, so I created my own based on the Music program and adjusted from there.
Just an idea: while not sure what you mean by ‘squelching’ (sound is notoriously difficult to describe!) I did get messy sounding music - listening on good speakers - whenever there was strong and complex content such as a deck of violins or a chorus. High notes were ‘clogged’ and the mid range jittered.
Experimenting with an equaliser in the hi-fi, I discovered the were struggling with frequencies I could not in fact hear, those above 4kHz. Putting a steep falloff there cured the distortions, without making the music any duller than I’m used to.
Next stop was the audiologist. She was a star. With the help of a keyboard she rolled off the HAs at 4kHz (and gave me stronger lows for good measure).
The ‘jitter’ had been caused by compression getting activated by the boosted highs I couldn’t hear anyway. Marvellous. And in a single 30 minute session.
Your headphones, Bobby, will likely have a strong top end and deliver detail that your HA maker perhaps did not anricipate.
Chorus: 'Speech in noise…Speech in noise…!
Crediton town, Devon UK
