Compatible 3rd party LE Audio and Auracast devices - a technical deep dive

@wtolkien said:

Nexia HA (reported here: https://forum.hearingtracker.com/t/jabra-enhance-pro-20-now-)

I believe that user was using an iPhone, so Auracast was a non-starter.

Hi wtolkein and welcome to the forum!

Here is my understanding of the situation and hopefully it will help you in your investigation. I’ve done some basic Bluetooth hacking and have a variety of sniffers, transmitters, receivers, etc. to mess around with that stuff and am very eager to see the new LE audio standards and support to begin rolling out to hearing aids and other devices. Hopefully this information will be helpful.

I don’t believe HAP/HAS is needed for 3rd party devices to work with hearing aids and the new LE Audio capabilities including the Auracast. HAP/HAS is optional and I think is focused more on interoperability between 3rd party devices and hearing aids across any manufacturer allowing remote control of programs, presets, volume, microphone gain, alerts, etc. Today, every manufacturer sells proprietary remotes or has proprietary software on the mobile devices to remotely control the hearing aids. In the future, the 3rd party device needs to be able to interact with the hearing aids to introduce new functionality, especially related to using the microphones in the hearing aids to transmit the users voice to interact with 3rd party devices. That level of integration controlling the gain levels of the hearing aid microphone without necessarily increasing the volume level of the receiver in the user’s ear. HAP/HAS provides remote control capability at that level.

I’m not very clear on the purpose of the unicast capabilities, but it seems like that is focused on extremely low latency communication such as broadcasting audio at a live event and having it synchronized with the person speaking into a microphone. That’s not much of an issue to deal with in a movie theater or TV since those already have latency correction capabilities, (lipsync) to keep things from looking off. Unicast looks more like extreme latency priority over audio quality.

If the Moerlabs device has base-level LE Audio, it should work just fine with a hearing aid claiming to support the same base-level of functionality without any need for HAP/HAS.

Capabilities like broadcast audio for Auracast have more dependencies above just the LE Audio streamer since you need to have the Auracast Assistant in the mix to direct the hearing aids to tune to the correct channel. It was looking like it would be a long road until everything would be in available and users had upgraded all of their devices, (mobile devices and hearing aids) with devices that support the LE Audio standards. There was some good news a few weeks ago when the Bluetooth SIG made a blog post with a new developed guide titled: Accelerating Market Adoption for Auracast™ Broadcast Audio. This guide describes how manufacturers and developers can work around an end user that may have new headphones or hearing aids that support Auracast, but they haven’t upgraded their mobile device. It’s pretty clever and should open the door to get things moving a little faster.

Blog Post:

Accelerating Market Adoption for Auracast™ Broadcast AudioAuracast™ ブロードキャスト...40

As 2024 progresses, more and more Auracast™ receivers (earbuds, hearing aids, headphones, and speakers) are coming to market. However, there’s been some concern that the lack of widely available…

Guide from the Bluetooth SIG:
https://www.bluetooth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2401_Accelerating_Auracast_Adoption_FINAL.pdf63

Kind of a late-night brain dump on what I know about this stuff, but looking forward to hearing about what you discover and comparing notes.

Thanks for your reply RSW.

So that would mean that the Jabra only has codec support for the Nordic nRF5340 and not the LC3… Unless I did not fully understand.

Jabra missed the boat on this one as the idea of using Auracast is not to establish a proprietary communication with only one system but to be compatible with all public Auracast broadcast. Sad!

Let’s hope they are going to be able to improve that in future firmware updates…

I am not holding my breath though as their support team does not seen to know much about the whole Auracast compatibility issue.

I am hoping for a firmware update as well!

I wish there was an email Adress to contact Jabra Support in writing to offer suggestions as calling their support line is a waste of time, you never talk to someone who really knows about Auracast, they only know about basic troubleshooting or how to pair a Bluetooth…

Yes, you are right it is very disappointing and it is basically false advertising… I hope they have a way to fix that…

Update:

After a bit of research it may not be false advertising after all!

Apparently there are several implementations of the LC3 which are not compatible with each other! The most popular ones are the “mtk” scheme and the “Qualcomm” scheme.

From my investigation the MoerDuo seems to be using the mtk scheme. It is very possible that the Jabra 20 pro uses the Qualcomm instead, hence the incompatibility, even though both use the LC3 codec and are officially Auracast!

I have no way to find out what scheme the Jabra uses as getting technical info from them is harder to get than pulling a tooth…

If someone can provide tech info from Jabra that would be fantastic!

Jabra, are you monitoring this forum?

If two major SoC makers are putting out product that’s incompatible with the other’s product, the spec is in deep trouble. If you want to go the conspiracy route, maybe Resound has disabled access to all Auracast transmitters except its own? Naughty if true (which it probably isn’t).

I’d be surprised if Resound weren’t monitoring this forum. A whole department at Resound wouldn’t be doing its job if that were true. They’re just not interacting with it.

No-one here is a customer of Resound. We’re customers of audiologists who are customers of Resound/Demant/whomever. So when they see a bunch of posts from people who are having difficulty getting their expensive hearing aids to do what they expect them to do, Resound doesn’t have to do anything at all. Just wait for the audiologists to contact them piecemeal with their clients’ connection problems. And that’s low on the audiologists priority list because they’re audiologists, not communications specialists.

A central forum where Resound could advise of known issues with its products would be super nice. But then that would be admitting that there are known issues with its products, wouldn’t it.

There’s been a lot of time spent by people on this forum trying to get their Nexias to connect to third party transmitters. Multiply that by a thousand for people who don’t use the forum. Support the people who use your products, Resound.

Unfortunately, the staff on the online technical support does not seem to have the proper knowledge to answer highly technical questions like those regarding Auracast… So, sadly, I am not expecting much about the support we can get for the Auracast LC3 codec schemes…

PS: [Solved] I am new to this board and I don’t know how to quote the post I am replying to, at beginning of the reply… [Solved]

@Patrick_D said:

I don’t know how to quot

→ highlight/mark the text you want to quote , then click the button Reply

@d_Wooluf said:

If you want to go the conspiracy route, maybe Resound has disabled access to all Auracast transmitters except its own? Naughty if true (which it probably isn’t).

It’s very unlikely, Auracast is more than streaming, it’s an accessibility feature that supposed to replace telecoil eventually [it will as it’s way way cheaper to deploy]. So intentional lockout out of this would be scandalous.

@wtolkien said:

And lastly, I’m waiting for Nordic nRF52840 USB dongle to arrive. These are super cheap on AliExpress and apparently can easily be turned into a Bluetooth sniffer. Nordic’s web site is amazing, they seem to offer all their Documentation and Software for free. Also, Resound uses Nordic as their Bluetooth provider:

Checking to see if you were able to get LE Audio working between any of these devices. I need to purchase some bluetooth headphones and would like to have the LE Audio working on them with my computer and TV. However, from what I’m seeing it appears they all need to have the same manufactures chipset to be certain they will work with each other. See attached from eppfun dongle using Qualcomm’s S3 Platform. The only headphones that I’m fairly certain will work with this dongle is the Bose Ultra QuiteComfort.Headphones. I’m interested in some JBL Headphones but have not been able to determine what bluetooth chipset they are using. Does anybody know?

Has anybody tried the Resound TV Streamer+ with Oticon Intent ? compatible for Auracast?