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LE Audio and the Future of Hearing

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I have the vaguest of memories that Oticon had withdrawn the claim, but I can’t cite a source.

Progress seems agonizingly slow. Phonak’s new Lumity still uses Paradise platform Classic . Resound’s new Omnia makes no mention of even though Resound One claimed it would be compatible. Seems like it’s harder than I think it should be. However Samsung’s new ear buds use BT 5.3 and claim LE Audio by sometime this year.

You can understand Phonak’s position. They’ve had some very good years selling a solution that connects to anything. As of now it’s only a tiny collection of smartphones that have . 99% of punters out there haven’t heard of it. Resound is disappointing.

Sony’s Linkbuds is the same. LE Audio through future firmware update. The NuraTrue Pro buds have the hardware for it, but Nura are chasing the audiophile market instead with Bluetooth Lossless. It’s going to take a critical mass of enabled phones I think to make things happen. It might take longer than we thought.

It’s you read the Oticon Polaris tech sheet it say Bluetooth Low Energy technology, does that mean or is it a play on words?

Bluetooth Low Energy has been around forever and it’s how your phone adjusts your hearing aid settings. It’s also been repurposed by Apple (mfi) and Google () for audio but that’s a clever hack really. uses a different kind of connection. It’s a confusion of terms. People use “” when they really means “LE Audio”. Also “ 5.2” and “” which are each only a part of LE Audio.

In reply to @d_Wooluf

Yeah, I definitely get Phonak’s position. They have something that works (more or less) for just about anybody, and they’re selling a ton of hearing aids.

I don’t think that we could expect Resound to say much about the technology in their initial launch material, but the launch press release does say:

“Whether users choose to stream phone calls or music to their ears, they can connect naturally and hear it all with the highest quality through ReSound OMNIA’s enhanced connectivity.”

Is that enhanced connectivity ? Time will tell.

In some stuff regarding Omnia, they specifically mention Made for iPhone and . Resound One specifically mentioned future compatibility with .

Likely having to do with new Lumity models.

In reply to @MDB

Yes I saw that but MFI and aren’t specifically about of course.

I have Resound Ones at the moment and I will be very alert for news on LE Audio, especially as I’m intending to get a new iPhone just as soon as there is a point in so doing.

In reply to @MDB

Funny thing this, Phonak brought into Sennheiser, so one would think that would be offered by them first…but no they offered yesteryears tech.

@d_Wooluf said:

As of now it’s only a tiny collection of smartphones that have LE Audio

So no backwards compatibility for those that have?

They’ll likely have backwards compatibility, but it may not be worth it to Phonak to make something that
would only be helpful to a few phones.

There’s an Apple event in September. The speculation is that they’ll announce the iphone 14 and airpod pro 2. There’s further speculation that the airpod pro 2 will have . That would be very important if true.

Edited

In reply to @MDB

@MDB said:

Resound’s new Omnia makes no mention of LE Audio even though Resound One claimed it would be compatible.

One possibility is that ReSound (and other MFI OEMs) don’t want to or can’t by NDA steal Apple’s thunder at the September event with whatever new audio announcements Apple has to make. ReSound does promise “crystal-clear” phone conversations (both ways) with iOS devices in the Omnia literature, but not with Android, where they just say direct streaming with is possible (and the lack of a clarity promise with Android may be due to all the different Android phone OEMs). But why are Omnia iPhone calls now crystal-clear when I don’t remember ReSound bragging about that for any previous models. So, it’ll be very interesting to hear what Apple has to say on September 7, if that’s the date.

To me “crystal clear” sounds like typical marketing crap because it doesn’t have any real meaning, but I could be wrong.

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