LE Audio and the Future of Hearing

The following How to Geek coverage (5/24/23) says that BT LE Audio will only be available in May 2023 for Windows Insiders, and eventually, regular Windows users will get the feature. I suggest NOT becoming a Windows Insider because, in my currently ongoing experience, once you volunteer to become an Insider, you can get trapped in a particular channel and not be able to get out any time soon (it’ll probably be a full year before MS lets me exit).

Bluetooth LE Audio Is Coming to Windows 11 (howtogeek.com)8

I think it would need LE Audio support in Windows and LE Audio support in Samsung to motivate hearing aid manufacturers to think seriously about it.

Quote from the end of How To Geek article:

Bluetooth LE Audio can come in handy, and your earbuds might already support it. The standard has been around for years, and recent earbuds like the Galaxy Buds2 Pro already come with support for it. Support for this should land sometime within the next few weeks or months for Insiders and, eventually, regular Windows 11 installations as well.

Source: Microsoft

I’ve developed a healthy dislike for the word “support” when it comes to technology. The Galaxy Buds2 Pro might support LE Audio, but do they actually do it? “Support” seems to be a statement of capability, not working functionality.

If you search on “LE Audio” (without the quotes), you get quite a few hits (4 pages worth). A good number have “LE Audio” as a phrase in the product listing and are BT 5.2 or higher (some even BT 5.4).

Launch Studio - Listing Search (bluetooth.com)8

Industry is full steam ahead with LE Audio, June 5th is the unveil of the macOS 14 with LE audio and a compatibly layer for the older MFI protocol

New (beta) firmware update to Sony Linkbuds S enables LE Audio.

Firmware Update to Version 4.2.1 | Sony USA9

Apple:
Made for iPhone hearing devices can now pair directly with Mac,67 so users with hearing disabilities can take calls and have conversations more conveniently.

To clarify, this is only for Mac computers listed in the link to the blue 6 above. In short, relatively new Mac computers. Also of note, this is made for iPhone tech. I don’t see them claiming LE Audio.

Absolutely: but it must be possible to (eventually) offer the same through Windows too as the underlying chip and motherboard peripherals will be common now?

Strikes me that it’s just one firm (probably Samsung) who will get around it on all form factors, just because their version - phone derived - will work on all the non IOS kit when they upscale it to their PC platforms. Then it eventually gets written as a global W11/12 patch.

MFI is buggy on Mac, I can’t stream with it but I can change program in this mode.

It support directional streaming from HA mic and mac as well… however i cannot connect and stream directly with it.

One problem is that I don’t think they implemented support for Bimodal streaming because it does not support pairing both HA / CI at this time…

Yes I agree. I believe it’s only Macs that use the M2 chip and I understand there will be new firmware for these computers. It doesn’t work “now”.

This came up on the Cochlear Facebook page. I thought it was very helpful.

New chip from Qualcomm with support for LE Audio and Auracast. Guess we’ll soon see USB dongles with it.

Want lag-free gaming audio on any device? Qualcomm has a chip for that20

Qualcomm announces its ultra-low latency QCC3086 audio chipset. Connecting via USB, this new technology brings ~20ms audio to the masses.