currently I am testing oticon more 1, they have been great. However as I work on my laptop all day long, having meetings, connection is very important to me. Can’t have earbuds with hearing aids. Clip connect is not very stable (gets stuck) and it is inconvenient (battery time is short). Also I find sound quality somewhat lower comparing to BT. So Audio is very important for me. As I would be paying full amount for two hearing aids myself, purchase makes sense only if Oticon is committed to deliver BLE LC3 firmware update for More. My audiologist sent query to Oticon but they seem slow to respond on that one and she hasn’t received response form them for a while.
I found rumors on internet that More will support it but that’s not reliable information. Does anybody have any information on that?
Also for a device to support BLE Audio LC3 it is necessary for hardware to support BT 5.2. Does Polaris platform supports BT 5.2 ?
I wear the More1 aids and use the connect clip with my Fire Tablet and MacBook, I talked to my audiologist this last week there will be a firmware update this spring around the first of May. My Audiologist is saying it will be mostly connectivity fixes and possibly giving us full hands free with our iPhones and maybe the newer android phones. But I am not expecting that the aids can be made completely with just a firmware update. I am retired so I am not normal streaming or on calls more than a short amount of time each day.
As I would be paying full amount for two hearing aids myself, purchase makes sense only if Oticon is committed to deliver BLE LC3 firmware update for More.
If it’s a deal breaker for you, I would wait until a product actually has the feature you want. I haven’t seen any manufacturer have a good track record for keeping promises.
Even if they support the standard, you’d have to wonder how well they support the standard when you remember that the More was probably designed 2 years ago (that press release is a year old). At the least you’d want a cast-iron guarantee from the audi that they’d accept them back if they didn’t work at the required level.
I am someone that cares about the.basics, and don’t really let the connectivity be a high priority. Yes I need it but I need the basics more as I don’t spend that much time on the phone or streaming music. I do enjoy audio books but with my devices I have to.use the connect clip for it.
@cvkemp : I agree with you about the basics, Chuck. It doesn’t make sense to me to buy something as costly or important as based on a prayer and a promise of future features.
If what you’re putting in your ears today is not sufficient, I say don’t buy it!
However as I work on my laptop all day long, having meetings, BT connection is very important to me. Can’t have earbuds with hearing aids. Clip connect is not very stable (gets stuck) and it is inconvenient (battery time is short). Also I find sound quality somewhat lower comparing to BT. So BLE Audio LC3 is very important for me. So BLE Audio LC3 is very important for me.
I don’t understand the part in bold, there. The ConnectClip does use just like anything else, so I’m not sure what you mean that its sound quality is somewhat lower comparing to BT. After all, BT is BT. If you find other BT devices having “higher sound quality”, it has nothing to do with their BT being better than the ConnectClip’s BT. it’s more likely that the devices have speakers that can produce better sound quality compared to the More receiver’s sound quality, most likely because of the inherent tiny receiver size that the More has, which cannot produce enough impressive bass compared to the other devices (like earbuds) where they can afford to have bigger size speakers in them, hence better bass reproduction compared to the More. So it’s not about the ConnectClip does not use BT connection, but it’s really about the devices speaker sizes that result in better quality or not.
Also, the issue with the ConnectClip’s inconvenience because its battery life is short when you’re on your laptop all day long using it, I’m not sure what the big deal is if you leave the ConnectClip on your laptop and charge it from the laptop every few hours whenever it runs low on battery juice. You can still use it just fine while it sits on the laptop. And if you need to wear it to use its mic, I’m sure a USB charging cable can reach from the laptop to the ConnectClip on your neck just fine.
Anyway, I’m not so sure if the support will solve the 2 issues you mentioned above. The sound quality issue in the More compared to other BT devices’ sound quality is inherently limited by its tiny receiver size. BLE LC3 is not going to fix that.
The BLE LC3 support, if the ConnectClip is designed to provide BLE LC3 support after all in the future, is not necessarily going to make the ConnectClip battery last longer. The ConnectClip is already in a form/shape where Oticon can easily double the size of its battery if it wants to, to increase the battery life. It is a design choice to go with the battery size they currently use, because they probably deem it adequate for most users’ application (although not necessarily for your specific application). Even if Oticon chooses to support BLE LC3 later, that doesn’t automatically guarantee that they’ll design a ConnectClip that will last all day.
I think I read somewhere that the More is prepared to be upgradeable to BT 5.2 later on, but it probably does not support it currently Currently it only has iOS MFI and support. Hopefully when it gets the 5.2 upgrade, it longer will need the ConnectClip, but only if the connecting device must also have the 5.2 support as well.
If you find other BT devices having “higher sound quality”, it has nothing to do with their BT being better than the ConnectClip’s BT. it’s more likely that the devices have speakers that can produce better sound quality compared to the More receiver’s sound quality, most likely because of the inherent tiny receiver size that the More has, which cannot produce enough impressive bass compared to the other devices (like earbuds) where they can afford to have bigger size speakers in them, hence better bass reproduction compared to the More. So it’s not about the ConnectClip does not use BT connection, but it’s really about the devices speaker sizes that result in better quality or not.
Sorry to disagree with you V, but i had that same impression some time back, and was respectfully reproached by @Um_bongo who pointed out the receivers in most all brands of ’s are in fact, the same speakers used in IEMs, and some buds.
They’re Balanced Armature Drivers, which are mass produced to the same specs across the board, so from Etymotic, Shure, etc. to Oticon, Phonak et al, same drivers.
The difference, is for hearing aids, the juice to drive a full frequency range output can’t be sustained for the hours needed for hearing aids, and they’re capped at 125Hz to about 10KHz.
Regarding @milandi post, it’s true that a good quality pair of earbuds with AptX codecs, are going to sound way better than the connectclip, which is probably using the original SBC codec (conjecture ).
Clip connect is not very stable (gets stuck) and it is inconvenient (battery time is short).
I don’t stream to the extent @milandi does, but usually can get 2 days on a charge.
Haven’t had issues with it getting “stuck” (you mean freezing up?)
Maybe check your BT drivers on laptop, or try a dongle.
Sorry to disagree with you V, but i had that same impression some time back, and was respectfully reproached by @Um_bongo who pointed out the receivers in most all brands of HA’s are in fact, the same speakers used in IEMs, and some buds.
They’re Balanced Armature Drivers, which are mass produced to the same specs across the board, so from Etymotic, Shure, etc. to Oticon, Phonak et al, same drivers.
The difference, is for hearing aids, the juice to drive a full frequency range output can’t be sustained for the hours needed for hearing aids, and they’re capped at 125Hz to about 10KHz.
I will admit that I don’t really know what the internal drivers/speakers are used in hearing aids vs other ear buds. But one thing I know is that the ear buds don’t go all the way inside the ear canal like the hearing aid receiver does. Most ear buds (like the AirPods, for example) reside outside of the ear canal, and only inside the ear “well” (I don’t know if there’s a term for it or not), so there’s a choice to use a larger driver/speaker than the hearing aid receiver, IF the mfg really chooses to do so.
But, now if indeed all mfgs all use the Balanced Amature Drivers like @Um_bongo told you so, but those mfgs choose to drive their drivers well below 125 Hz and above 10 KHz because they have the juice, while mfgs choose to driver their drivers down to only 125 Hz to conserve juice, then what I said is still true that the quality difference heard between hearing aids and other third party BT ear bud type devices is not because of the difference between the HA BT vs and ear bud’s BT, but because of the difference in how they use the driver, whether they use a different/bigger driver (like I thought), or whether they cripple the HA driver to conserve battery.
The bottom line is that it’s not the BT application that makes them sound different, it’s the HA limitation that makes them sound different. And that’s not going to change going forward into the future, unless an HA mfg can manage to supply enough juice to undo the capping at 125 Hz (and maybe the capping above 10 KHz as well?).
The whole point of my post above is that sometimes it’s pointless to worry about and compare advanced BT protocols and advanced codecs in terms of sound quality if fundamentally, the inherent sound quality of the HA receiver is purposefully handicapped in the first place. Now whether that handicap is due to the (small) receiver size like I (maybe incorrectly) thought, or due to the HA battery conservation issue, that’s beside the point anyway.
is for low energy consumption
unless you are out of battery for mic no worry about it.
usually mic last for 5-6 hours at least for signia streamline mic
yes BLE and 5.3 will give robust connection and switching between device with low battery conumption
till that just put your mic close to sound source
have an high-end laptop with windows and occasionally driver kills whole audio layer so it can’t play sounds on any other audio device. Need to reboot. Doesn’t happen to frequently so I am ok with this.
As of sound quality of clip connect vs BT experiment I did it is to connect both clip connect and hearing aid to pixel smartphone. Then I would play music and switch output between clip connect and More and sound is somewhat better when streamed directly to hearing aid.
As of sound quality of clip connect vs BT experiment I did it is to connect both clip connect and hearing aid to pixel smartphone. Then I would play music and switch output between clip connect and More and sound is somewhat better when streamed directly to hearing aid.
So your Pixel smartphone has support, and you were able to hear better music sound quality on your More with the direct ASHA connection versus on your More through the ConnectClip to your Pixel smartphone?
Can you explain how the music is better? Do you seem to get more low and/or high frequency range when connected via ASHA? If it’s the same range in both cases, then can you elaborate on how the music is better via the ASHA connection?
@Volusiano and @milandi I just did the same experiment with my Pixel 5a and amazon music ultra HD music.
In developer options on the Pixel using the ConnectClip the phone uses:
SBC codec.
Sample rate 44.1khz
16 bits/sample
Using direct it uses System Selection (default) for all values.
So, there is a difference, but using MyMusic program, it’s really difficult to elaboate as to which is better.
I’d venture a guess that @milandi is right, ASHA is a slight bit more defined.
Have to do some detective work to find out what System Default is.
For the curious….you can see which codecs are available on your phone and which one is currently in actual use if you have enabled Developer Mode on your Android phone. scroll way down on the developer options screen till you see Bluetooth Audio Codec. Clicking on this shows all available codecs your phone has and which one is actually being used at the time. You can also change the codec being used - but of course the device it is connected to has to also understand that codec. Mine uses SBC even though aptx is in the phone… my aids can’t understand aptx unfortunately. The phone is supposed to always pick the best codec it can.
good finding @flashb1024 ! It makes sense, I am trying More 1 from audiologist so there is no music program setup and I guess different codec (or bitrate) is being used in my case
Hot Springs Village, Arkansas
Oticonian/Disposablyte
