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LE Audio and the Future of Hearing

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I use Phonak with Compilot. And it often takes 1-3 seconds for the sound to start playing.
Does the new codec speed up the start of sound playback, to be like using a wired headset.

I don’t know what it’s like with MFI hearing aids, do they reproduce sound in an instant? Do they beep when playback stops and then brick beep when playback starts?

In reply to @d_Wooluf

@d_Wooluf said:

They say that LC3 is built to be very tolerant to lost packets and degrades gracefully as range limits are reached. Hopefully…

I looked at a preliminary doc for the codec (version 1.0) - looks like they are concerned with minimizing latency. Of interest to me, there are a number of sampling rates and two are probably for hearing aids (they use an undefined abbreviation starting with so I’m guessing but the highest is 24 kHz). As most hearing aid receivers don’t put out much power past 10 kHz (or somewhat lower), the 24 kHz rate should be sufficient for hearing aid specific usage. But what happens to a full rate LC3 (48 kHz) bitstream when it hits a low power hearing aid LC3 decoder or will all decoders handle all sampling and bit-rates?

For example, the frequency response given for the Oticon TV Adapter 3 is given as out to 10 kHz and the 85 receivers in my Opn S 1 aids are rated to 9500 Hz with a Ear Simulator and 8500 Hz with a 2CC coupler. So any sample rate above 24 kHz would be overkill for my hearing aids and probably others.

Looks like the LC3 contributors included GN Resound, Starkey, and Widex among others like Apple, Bose, Ericsson, Intel and others I’m not familiar with.

Edited
@biggar said:

So any sample rate above 24 kHz would be overkill for my hearing aids and probably others.

I think the sampling rate in is for folks with normal hearing where the (mistaken?) presumption is that they can hear up to 20 kHz so if you want really high-quality audio reproduction you have to ~2x oversample:

Digital Audio Basics: Sample Rate and Bit Depth | PreSonus1

There used to be a competing blog widely cited on the Internet entitled: 24/192 Music Downloads…and why they make no sense but it apparently has gone the way of the dodo bird. The blog was devoted to the supposed insanity of allowing for hearing anything above 10 kHz or something like that (sorry I’ve forgotten the exact way it attacked bit depth, supersampling, etc., but it was a classic diatribe). There are lots of hits to a search on the blog title but they all generate page <404> errors now, alas!

Edit_Update: Actually, Abram Bailey actually cited the MIA blog post in a Scholarly Article and News post in August, 2017 (member archive) but Abram’s link, too, same as all the others, is to the vanished URL, which was https : //people. xiph. org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html . xiph.org is still in existence, though, and maybe the essence is contained in one of its explanatory videos on more than everything you ever wanted to know about audio (?): Xiph.org: Video

Hearing aid voice: 16 KHz
Hearing aid music 24 KHz
High-quality voice 32 KHz
High-quality music 48KHz

Other sampling rates are possible.

While I was searching (randomly) for the latest news on the codec and how its different components are progressing towards finalization, I came across the following in-depth Android Authority reviews of audio codecs, sampling frequency, bit depth, and bit rate and how various codecs perform. The basic conclusion was (if you’re a young, normal-hearing human being) to stick with wired audio. That codecs just don’t deliver the same audio quality that wired audio does (if you’re discerning). The in-depth part of the two-part companion articles allowed that many people might not be able to distinguish the difference. Perhaps that’s the silver lining in some of our clouds of hearing loss - I probably cannot distinguish the difference between wired and wireless audio with my hearing. Another amusing thing about the article is it warns you that some of the codecs cannot reproduce music without appreciable noise above 90 db. Hopefully most of us do not have to have that much amplification to hear something but that’s an interesting consideration for young 'uns with good hearing who like their music LOUD!!! Maybe if that fact were pointed out to more young loud listeners more often, they’d turn the music down more, enjoy the higher quality, and damage their hearing less at time goes by.

Initial article (mentions LC3 at end but not much info): Bluetooth codecs 101: Everything you need to know - Android Authority2

Quote below is from end of following article: Bluetooth headphones perform worse than wired models (androidauthority.com)3

Every single Bluetooth codec out there exhibits a higher level of noise than wired audio, though only AAC, SBC, and LDAC 330kbps exhibit audible noise. Where wired audio can handle CD audio and 24-bit music, Bluetooth headphones simply can’t, though 24-bit is dramatic overkill anyways. If you like your music loud, Bluetooth will be noisier than wired listening, depending on how high you crank it.

Of the tested codecs we met, aptX and aptX HD fared the best out of all our candidates. While that may seem strange to say, on the whole their results were right where they needed to stand in for a wire for commuters and listeners over 40. You’ll really only run into issues at high volumes (more than 90dB), so while aptX can’t quite keep up with CD quality, aptX HD gets extremely close to the mark with a little processing creativity. Both codecs fall short in the highest frequencies a human could potentially hear, but the vast majority of people can’t hear sounds over 18kHz anyway.

Good enough for most people, but not for everyone

Bluetooth headphones and earphones like the Apple AirPods may be good enough for most people, but it’s not good enough for everyone, and that’s a problem. While the benefits of high-bitrate music are largely academic, some flaws with Bluetooth audio prevent it from replacing the 3.5mm TRRS plug in all contexts. It’s a more expensive, less effective solution. If you’re looking for commuting headphones, they’re great. Music lovers listening in a quiet environment will want something with a wire. Not only will it be cheaper, but it’ll work better too.

I have a pair of higher end noise canceling headphones from Senneheiser. Works great by for traveling, walking around, and even as a headset with its mics for cell calls or audio on my laptop. It also allows wired use with a removable cable. Yes, it’s not a huge difference, but it’s enough to be noticeable. Even with my HF hearing loss I can catch the difference, but short of a dedicated audio session BT is fine.

Now of course I have the chance of using my and they’re good for background, but things I really want to listen to I have to switch over. It’s still odd to me that music is something I feel comfortable with, yet walking around and interacting other people my HAs have become extremely important.

In reply to @jim_lewis

They’re probably right. If you’re under twenty five, own great equipment and have an audiophile’s sensibilities… Listening to music by yourself in a quiet environment is not what Bluetooth’s strongest suit I guess.

Luckily I still have a LG V20 with headphone socket and hi-fi DAC so when hearing loss is finally cured I’m all ready.

I wonder how strong a correlation there is between owning high end audio equipment and hearing loss? :smile:

In reply to @hbillsmith

Had missed this. Was a good read. Sounds like there is hope for older 5 devices to receive firmware upgrades. It also sounds pretty hopeful if device has BT 5.2, the Low Energy Audio can be supported.

@MDB said:

Had missed this. Was a good read.

Same here. Very interesting on the comparative development of vs. and whether BT 5.0 as well as BT 5.2 is upgradable to BT LE Audio. ReSound apparently believes in the future of , too, as its ’s communicate with each other via that methodology as opposed to .

The author of the posted article, though, is perhaps an electronics expert but not a (GN ReSound) hearing aid expert. The article mislabels the microphone openings on the ReSound Quattro and there are THREE, not TWO. The top opening on the Quattro body in the article that’s labeled as a microphone is actually the insertion point for a receiver wire removal tool!

The official Quattro parts diagram: (#6 parts are microphone openings, not the unlabeled opening closest to the receiver wire in the diagram I provide, which the author of the BT LE Audio has pegged wrongly).

image

You may be right on that, Dimitrii. It’s hard to find info on ReSound’s “Ear to Ear” communication protocol but an old 2012 bulletin for the ReSound Verso saved on another site says that the Verso communicates ear-to-ear at 2.4 GHz. And the following seniorliving.org “infomercial” by an audi who says that he’s fitted a lot of ReSound aids says that ReSound’s ear-to-ear communication is at 2.4 GHz. I’m not sure where I got the idea that it was -based?! I guess since transmission is more efficient that classic , i.e., the pipeline is not always on, the ’s can periodically turn on and blast the BLE-based info from one HA to another through our heads even though the higher frequency BLE is absorbed more readily than NFMI.

is a whole new chipset that’s been delayed. Hard to see how existing products or the More can provide LE Audio simply with a firmware update. Is it possible?

@sufhl said:

BT LE Audio is a whole new chipset that’s been delayed. …

Supposedly as far as hardware goes, 5.2, which is already in some of the very newest phones, is supposed to be both necessary and sufficient to run BT . A number of leading chip manufacturers like Qualcomm have built chips that contain the BT 5.2 hardware and they advertise, if you check some of the preceding posts in this thread, that those chips are capable of running BT LE Audio. The codec, the software basis of BT LE Audio’s performance characteristics has yet to be approved in its final version. But nothing seems to be going on here that’s very different than goes on with new Wi-Fi protocols. For example, hardware capable of supporting 2.4 GHz 802.11n was widely available before the software standard for that spec was finalized and individual companies like Linksys released their own personal flavors of 802.11n that would work between a local Linksys client, like a USB plug-in receiver and a Linksys router. When the official 802.11n standard was approved all the different companies that had an early “special flavor” coming out party issued firmware updates to the official standard. “Firmware” is just “permanent” software programmed into read-only memory.

I guess there is always some danger that someone in the SIG group will decide that LC3 just can’t make the performance grade on BT 5.2 hardware and they’re going to have to ditch the whole thing and come up with a better performance spec and hardware to support it. Quite the contrary, though, as d’Wooluf pointed out a while back, the process seems to be coming down the home stretch with almost all boxes now checked and final complete approval of the spec sometime in mid-2021: LE Audio Specifications | Bluetooth® Technology Website2

Edited

In reply to @jim_lewis

Something to consider. I don’t know if there are required and non required features for 5.2. I know that for BT 5 some features were optional. In other words, something could be called BT 5 and have the required features, but not necessarily the non required ones. I don’t know if that will be the case for BT 5.2 or not, but I think it warrants being aware before committing to a purchase.

Thanks for explaining so well @jim_lewis. Sounds hopeful. Now we just need to hope solutions are universal not siloed.

Do you think people will love hearing so much better in noise, distance or reverb with and in products more than they love the benefit of real ear measures and traditional fittings?

I think hearing aids are way overhyped. Look at what Bose came up by being first to the party. It looks like a low end hearing aid. Granted we don’t know how well it works, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of design innovation.

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