very happy with my quatto’s in general (wearing aids for 10 years). however:
a. somewhat pissed-off with google for not incorporating streaming to my pixel 2xl. very annoying since there’s no difference so i can see in hardware requirements. has anyone any news, suggestions regarding this?
b. my streamer doesn’t seem to work with optical input? anyone else have this problem?
c. the output from the stream is very loud on the left and almost inaudible on the right. i have to balance with the 3d app. again, anyone else finding this?
If you’re asking about using the ReSound TV Streamer 2 with the Quattro’s, my experience has been different from yours.
The devil can be in the details so more details about how yours is set up might help figure out what’s going on.
I had a “control” as my Sony TV was already set up to pass through all its audio output to my Yamaha ampifier and speaker system via a TOSLINK optical cable and that was working fine.
To insert the ReSound TV Streamer 2 into the works, I purchased a POWERED TOSLINK optical splitter on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HQ2R314/135 plus another TOSLINK cable (the TV Streamer 2 comes with one).
I haven’t paid careful attention to left/right difference in streaming TV/media center output directly to my ’s but the sound seems balanced, right in the center of my head. And the sound quality via direct streaming is great. Our TV is in a very large, two-story high family room so I think sound out of the speakers must have a lot of room reverberations but sound streamed directly to the HA’s is very crisp and clear, speech highly intelligible for me. My audi set my volume a little on the high side and the sound being streamed from the TV is so loud, I have to turn it down a couple of notches. Since sound via HDMI input passes directly out of our TV, the TV volume control does nothing to control sound output to my ears. I let my wife fiddle with the Yamaha amplifier control to her liking and I control direct streaming volume and speaker volume pickup to my external HA mics via the separate Streaming and Surroundings controls in the ReSound Smart 3D phone app.
If my experience with the ReSound streamer can be generalized to other HA’s, for other folks in general, if you watch a bunch of TV, I highly recommend getting a streamer compatible with your HA brand as I find the sound quality of both Blu-ray discs and OTA digital TV broadcasts a lot better through streaming than listening through the speaker system hooked up to the TV. A slight disadvantage to streaming with my setup is my HA’s only get the sound in stereo so I lose some of the sound spatiality I might get in listening to Dolby 5:1 sound (or better) through our speaker system-and if I want to try to recoup that by also listening with my external HA mics to the speaker sounds, I probably want to go into omnidirectional listening mode for the HA external mics, which I haven’t been doing so far (more pickup of room noise, too, like the or heater kicking on during a show, too, probably!).
the tv is an older (2012) sony bravia flat panel (the not terribly smart model).
we have a sound bar connected to the optical out - working perfectly - however, if i plug the optical cable into the streamer i get nothing? analogue in is fine on streamer*, other than balance.
*analogue into the streamer comes from the headphone out on the tv - which is set in settings to fixed level. listening to this output directly via wired headphones is fine, ie. the audio is balanced.
with regard to the latter, ie. balance, the streamer works, but as noted, the left channel is much louder than the right. to compensate for this i use the 3d app and use l/r volume controls to ‘balance’ the audio.
the streamer itself seems pretty basic, and i don’t see any other adjustments than volume on top and a simple stereo / mono switch on the back…
as an aside to this, i’m looking at a new tv, but am surprised that many models no longer bother with a headphone jack out but hype bluetooth instead. all well and good apart from when you need one ;-(
leslie
btw. i’ve been trying to find an optical in > optical out + analogue l/r adaptor. anyone knows of one?
the tv is an older (2012) sony bravia flat panel (the not terribly smart model).
Our Sony TV is even older, a Bravia XBR4 model purchased in January, 2008. The Sony manual says the following:
Connects to the optical audio input of your digital audio. equipment that is PCM/Dolby
Digital compatible. Dolby Digital Audio signal from the HDMI input will be output as
PCM.
So that works great for the ReSound TV Streamer 2 as it only accepts either PCM or Dolby Digital 5:1 as optical audio digital input via the TOSLINK cable (from the TV Streamer 2 manual):
Connecting the TV Streamer 2 to a digital audio source (E.g. TV or HiFi stereo)
The TV Streamer 2 supports both analog and digital audio
input. When using digital audio input the following formats are
supported:
Stereo PCM
Sample rate: Up to 192 kHz
Sample resolution: Up to 32 bit
Dolby Digital
Channels: Max 5.1
Bitrate: 32 kbs to 640 kbs
Sample rate: 32, 44.1, and 48 kHz
Note: Dolby Digital Plus (requiring an HDMI interface), Dolby True-
HD, Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Digital EX, Dolby Digital Surround EX,
and AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) are not supported.
My TV might be so old and relatively dumb that it only does PCM, which works fine for the ReSound TV Streamer 2 with TOSLINK input. Maybe your TV is too smart and if you don’t go into SOUND settings for the TV, it might be outputting one of the newer formats that the ReSound Streamer would not be able to handle. I know with our Samsung Blu-ray player has a number of options of sending digital audio to the TV and if I don’t pick either PCM or Dolby Digital 5:1, I don’t get any sound either to our amplifier or to the ReSound Streamer. So you might want to check also what the sound settings are for whatever input devices that you’re feeding sound to the TV with. All our input devices (of which we have quite a few) are HDMI-based and we handle the problem of only having 3 HDMI inputs to the TV by using a powered HDMI splitter, which also works quite well (has a remote to change “channels”).
I guess your point c. in your OP is with analog input to the streamer from the TV? Maybe if your streamer is brand new, you should return it to the place you got it and have it handled under warranty - or it came with a satisfaction-guarantee from eBay return it? I tried my streamer on analog and it worked fine for that. On point b. in your OP, no optical input at all, it’s pretty stupid to suggest it but I presume you took the protective nubbins off each end of the TOSLINK cable (I don’t think you could plug the cable into the female TOSLINK ports on TV and streamer if you hadn’t). The streamer and my TV also have coaxial ports, which aren’t as good as TOSLINK but I guess if you have a coaxial cable lying around, you could always check the streamer performance with that type of cable and if it misbehaves there, too, you’d have that much more reason to try to get the device replaced or your money back. Sorry to hear it’s not working for you - I thought it would be a boring addition to my TV but for me, it really makes listening to TV much more enjoyable than it was with just my ’s. Hope you can find a solution or get the device replaced.
my streamer doesn’t seem to work with optical input? anyone else have this problem?
Hi Leslie,
Have you tried plugging the Toslink cable into the audio out port on your TV and looking at the other end of the cable? With audio playing you should see a red light.
I have 2 TV Streamer 2s, one for my TV and one for my computer, and both are working fine.
well the cable drives our soundbar so i presume it should work with the streamer… but it doesn’t.
i wish there was a way to test the output from the streamer ‘directly’ so i could figure out if it is one channel failing or whether it’s my aids not receiving properly…
either way, very happy with the aids themselves, but pissed that google isn’t incorporating my 2 xl into their streaming update…
well the cable drives our soundbar so i presume it should work with the streamer
You haven’t mentioned where you got the TV Streamer 2 - if it’s “pre-owned,” that might be the source of the problems. But a brand new TV Streamer 2 comes with a very high-quality-looking short TOSLINK cable. Why not try that from your TV to the streamer just in case there is something funky about how the soundbar connects to the cable that you’re already using (and a corollary is if you have the Streamer TOSLINK cable, theoretically it should work fine with your soundbar when it’s connected to the TV).
I think the streamer will also accept input from a double-ended male 3.5 mm phone jack that you might plug into the audio output of a computer or other sound source. That might allow you to test sound reception streamed to your ’s from a source other than your TV. The ReSound Smart 3D app should show you whether one or both HA’s are officially connected to the Streamer (when you think you’re connected, tap the STATUS tab on the bottom of the screen in the Smart 3D app-it will display what each HA is connected to-should be your phone and the streamer for each HA). Since you say that under some circumstances you hear loud sound in one ear but little in the other, presumably you’re all set up with a smartphone and have switched the HA program in use to the Streamer program on the top ribbon of the 3D app (I don’t hear anything from the streamer, at least immediately, unless I swipe to that program on the upper program ribbon).
What sound input to the TV is giving you problems??? - as I mentioned my TV appears to depend, at least for a Samsung Blu-ray player, on the correct settings on the input device to get the right output from the TV for the streamer. If I send the wrong format input to the TV, it can’t convert the input to PCM for the ReSound streamer. So the safest test system might be one where you are absolutely sure and have control over the input format to the TV (or output from your computer).
Thanks for the interest…
The steamer came from specsavers, along with my aids, so it’s fresh of the shelf.
I’ve tried a couple of different optical cable, all of which work with sound bar - which is the only test bed I have unfortunately.
I’m quite familiar with using the streamer and 3d app, which I have to use to ‘balance’ the l/r changes in my aids. There’s nothing with optical at all.
It’s unfortunate that I can’t ‘test’ the audio output from the streamer into some other Bluetooth device like my headphones…
Anyway, I’ve contacted specsavers and will await to hear from them. They’ve been very good with post sale service and my audiologist has been exemplary.
From a technical point of view, after 50 year in tv and video production I feel reasonably confident that I’ve explored most avenues available to me to test the streamer.
All this has been brought on by the possibility of our getting a new TV.i like the picture quality of both Samsung and LG, but neither have audio out via headphones anymore, just blue tooth. Now if I could stream that directly we’d be taking a whole new ball game
Otherwise it’s back to another Sony.
Thanks for your time and interest…
however, have a friend sending an optical splitter, so before doing anything else, i’ll give it a whirl. there’s no long runs involved so i don’t suppose they’ll be any major light loss.
Montana