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Streaming from Windows 10 desktop? How?

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Edited

In reply to @member6

Thanks for explaining the terminology of .
Here is my Bluetooth Stack in Win 10 with 4.2

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I require no dongle accessory to receive stereo sound.
Isn’t stereo, directed to the right hearing aid, and then transmitted by it to the left,
what LE is all about? In my reading of BT 5, the principal difference they cite is
extended range.

In reply to @darylm

Totally in agreement with you. Also, macOS doesn’t have Apple’s MFI too, Apple is probably going to be implementing in macOS 14 and iOS / iPadOS 17

In reply to @fredkahan

@fredkahan said:

what LE is all about?

Bluetooth Classic is a power hog and horribly inefficient like you mentioned, it relays the data from one to another, that is not ideal and causes high power consumption…

LE audio fixes that by isochronous channels which basically transmit/synchronizes 2 devices independently …

Thankyou !
Yes, it is a power hog.
I’ll have to wait for my KS10’s (which still power up ok) my laptop and my cellphone to all go obsolete. My hearing impairment was such that the restoration of stereo music was reason enough to treasure the KS10’s.

Edited

In reply to @401todd

@401todd said:

There is an app called AudioRelay that is installed on your Win10 PC and your Android phone (may be available for iPhone, too) that allows you to stream from your PC to your hearing aids.

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Can’t find this App on my iPhone which is a real shame.

Think this is an iPhone version? Not 100% sure.

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Don’t think it works with Windows tho. Only Mac.

I don’t have an iPhone or Mac so can’t give you any useful input. (I probably couldn’t even if I did have those devices).

Edited

I have Oticon More 1 . I have tried connecting them to my computer 3 ways - a simple Bluetooth 5.3 USB dongle (yes, Win 10 has Bluetooth 5.2 support), a Bluetooth 5.3 USB audio transmitter, and a Bluetooth 5.2 transmitter that connects to the 3.5mm audio out port. In the 1st case I can connect my HAs to the computer, but because there are no drivers for the HAs in Windows, it just puts them in Other Devices, and you can’t use them for audio output. In the other 2 cases the other devices don’t even see the HAs when trying to sync them. All dead ends. Probably because although Oticon uses Bluetooth LE, there is either a proprietary connection or streaming protocol built in to the HAs.

As for AudioRelay and the similar SoundWire, they both work, but there is significant lag. Annoying if you are watching anyone speak/a movie, although they would be fine for just listening to computer audio.

Edited

I can do what OP is asking, with my ReSound LiNX Quattro aids, on my Windows desktop PC, using a ReSound TV Streamer 2. I connect the TV Streamer to the desktop PC with a digital optical cable; my PC has an optical audio out port; not all PCs have this port, so you have to check if this can be done on yours. The optical audio out port on the PC has to be configured in Windows’ sound settings. You also have to be sure to pick a TV streamer that is compatible with your model of hearing aids. Once you know the right streamer for your aids, you can often find them on eBay for much less money than audiologists charge. Then I use the ReSound Smart 3D app on my smartphone to switch the aids to that TV streamer, and the sound goes directly to my hearing aids using the streamer’s Bluetooth rather than the PC’s.

HOWEVER I don’t consider the sound quality good enough for music playback; your mileage may vary depending how your aids are set. I use this setup not for music but for yoga videos on YouTube; doing these I often can’t see the computer monitor screen, so I need the sound in my ear.

If I want to listen to music being played on the PC, I get better results with good mini speakers facing me, or headphones, with the ReSound app set to music playback, or with AirPods that have been set to my .

How does music sound quality differ for you using the ReSound TV streamer vs. mobile phone playback (assuming you might also be using the latter) with your Linx Quattro?

awful on my Android phone, Google use a 30 year old codec and TV streamer is much better

Edited

In reply to @mikehoopes

mike, as far as I know, and I’m sure someone will offer a correction if this is not accurate, the ReSound TV Streamer 2 uses Bluetooth to send audio directly to the hearing aids but cannot use Bluetooth to connect to an iPhone or other transmitting device for sound playback.

I believe the audio coming out of the device (PC in this case, or AV receiver, Blu-Ray player, etc.) has to be connected to the audio input of the ReSound TV Streamer 2 with a digital audio cable, which today’s smartphones can’t do. (Maybe there’s a way to rig it with an adapter coming out of the charger port, as you can for hardwired mini headphones/earbuds; I don’t know.)

I can use a digital optical cable from my PC to make this connection. There’s also a coaxial digital cable input on the ReSound TV Streamer 2. The original ReSound TV Streamer (1), which no longer connects to newer ReSound aids like the Quattros, could use analog RCA L-R audio cables and maybe an analog stereo mini cable as well to make the audio connection between sending device and receiving streamer, but TV Streamer 2 needs a digital cable AFAIK.

The ReSound TV Streamer 2 sounds great to me with spoken dialogue on TV shows and computer audio; it’s a big help. But for music playback, if I want to connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone, as I said, I’d use not the TV Streamer 2 but Apple AirPods Pro 2 earbuds or other good-quality Bluetooth earbuds (oh, and without my aids in my ears) or with Bluetooth headphones with aids in… with the playback volume set relatively SOFTLY to preserve what little hearing I have left! Those all sound quite good with music played on my iPhone.

One reason music playback doesn’t sound so great with TV Streamer 2 is that if you tell the aids to use the sound from the TV Streamer, you can’t also set the Music program in the Smart 3D app; it’s one or the other. Music doesn’t sound as good to me without the Music program set, because then I’m getting hearing aid settings optimized for spoken voice.

Edited

OK, so TV Streamer 2 can use an analog mini cable, which you can connect directly to the headphone port of older smartphones or get an adapter to connect to charging port of newer smartphones that don’t have a headphone port.

That could work to send music from an iPhone to TV Streamer 2, however, for me, I’d expect to still be getting sound customized for spoken voice through the TV streamer which is not ideal for music playback. It might be possible to fiddle with equalization on the iPhone to make it sound better with music, maybe using a 3rd party app.

What I do with current iOS and AirPods Pro 2 is customize the playback through the AirPods to approximate my ; one reason I don’t wear hearing aids when using AirPods. Someone with less significant losses might hear music better than I do with ReSound’s All-Around settings.

Also just to be clear, anyone contemplating trying this needs to keep in mind that only compatible ReSound hearing aids can receive a Bluetooth audio signal from ReSound’s TV Streamer 2. A buyer has to check theirr aids against ReSound’s list of supported devices; only certain ReSound aids will work. Many other makes of aids that support Bluetooth have their own TV streamers, and some others may work with a Bluetooth signal from a smartphone or PC, I dunno.

I’m using the ReSound ‘Multi-Mic’ to get sound from my laptop to my Jabras.

The Multi-Mic connects via a thin cable with 2 male 3.5 mm connectors. or BTLE gets the signal from the Multi-Mic to the aids. The Jabras are new, and I’ve used the Multi-Mic only twice, but the 90 minute Zoom meeting was clearer by far than the sound from a BT speaker into the normal mics on aids, and the Multi-Mic is a lot less cumbersome than the TV Streamer 2.

The Multi-Mic isn’t cheap ($250?), but it’s a lot cheaper than writing the necessary driver.

My question was comparing sound quality from mobile phone to vs. TV streamer to HA. Thanks for the info.

While I appreciate the TV streamer’s speech priority, its inflexibility doesn’t bode well for mixed content like movies, music, etc. for those of us with only moderate . I would hope that ReSound would give users the option in the app to choose the program set with the Streamer.

I’m quite disappointed to hear that the $249 AirPods Pro with provide a better experience with PC/entertainment sources (to include Apple mobile devices?) than a $5K+ set of custom hearing aids. If their aim is to maximize HA usage, that’s not going to help, if people have to defer to significantly cheaper consumer-grade devices to improve sound quality with media content.

I can use the AirPods Pro directly with an Apple TV set top box, but then the audio cannot be shared with the speaker system for the benefit of others in the room - so, back to the Streamer in Speech mode? Ugh.

The Multi-Mic sounds like an “ok” interim solution for the PC (for listening only - seems exceedingly expensive for only that purpose - the mic has no use case for the PC); I can exclusively route the analog signals from my PC motherboard to it and otherwise choose my USB audio receiver (Topping DX3 Pro) for speakers when desired. The additional A/D conversion step bothers me a bit from a tech standpoint, but it does seem like we’re in a pre--audio transitional period right now.

In reply to @rojmiller

Just because you can plug a USB 5.2 dongle into a PC running Windows 10 does not mean Windows 10 “has Bluetooth 5.2 support”. BT is a very complicated standard that comprises a lot of components. Many of the components are from earlier versions of Bluetooth, such as A2DP and HSP which are from Bluetooth Classic.

I previously posted a link called “Supported Bluetooth profiles”. Here it is again: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/supported-bluetooth-profiles-8900e50f-318e-4283-2beb-c8325bfc95152

Note, there is no mention of Bluetooth in the list of supported profiles.

At some point, there will be another version of BT, maybe BT 6. If you plug a BT 6 dongle into a PC, it does not necessarily mean that all of the newer features of the newer version of BT will work on the PC, but rather it’s more likely that the features from the earlier version of BT will be what is used. This is due to the inherent backward compatibility that is built into the BT protocol stack.

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