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AirPod Pro 2 as hearing device

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Edited

In reply to @Emile030

One other thing I want to add is that if you have a YouTube video content that’s worth some setup time to get the desired audio experience from the APP2, there are ways to download it into a video file so you can play on VLC and listen via the iphone VLC Streamer.

What I’ve been able to try out successfully is the YouTube-dl script. You download the .exe version of it and run it in the command prompt with the shared URL that you copy from the YouTube video of interest. It’ll write into an .mp4 file for you. You can also add options to also download the subtitle if one’s available, or an auto-generated subtitle as well. But I tried it out with an video with auto-generated subtitle and the options for subtitle in youtube-dl didn’t work for me. I ended up using an online free service called downsub.com2 (you just put in the link and it generates an .srt file online for you) and that works better.

Of course all of that takes a little bit of extra time to set up, and the run time will be as long as the video because you’re capturing the stream into a video file. But it all runs in the background anyway while you do something else. When it’s done, you just load it into the Windows VLC Streamer Help for processing like with any other videos so you can get the APP2 audio experience from the iPhone.

Not sure why it matters what Windows version of Airfoil I use if it’s a retired and trial version with only a 10-minute usability window that you can’t even buy a license for from the company anymore. But if you must have the version number, it’s version 5.7.0. I’m just trying to save everybody’s time here and warn them not to bother trying it because you can’t buy it anymore.

Yeah, it should be pretty obvious from my explanation that I found a complicated workaround using VLC Streamer to get my APP2 listening experience for videos on Windows 11.

Even if you can buy an Airfoil license to use it, it’s also a complicated workaround as well because you need to do audio sync to make up for the audio lag.

Edited
@Volusiano said:

audio sync to make up for the audio lag

Didn’t note the lag but will try it out, after my sleep now, tomorrow.
Will PM you afterwards.

EDIT:
Found the lag also. For me it was in VLC about -0,800 I had to compensate. Assume this will depend on processor speed and transmission to .

20221216_100740

Edited

Thanks for your comments @e1405 . I’ll explain. You’re right with your advice to me that works for this situation.

My intention was helping @Volusiano as I am a sensitive guy. Saw his audiogramm and read about his struggling which seems to be hard in my opinion. As having mild hearing deficit myself could imagine how it would break me up in his situation. And mostly I cannot give up myself if I buy expensive AirPods or whatever and the whole thing will not work as I expected. :cry: So tried to help solving his specific problem.
Am awaiting PM from him to see if I can help.

In reply to @Emile030

@Emile030 said:

Found the lag also. For me it was in VLC about -0,800 I had to compensate. Assume this will depend on processor speed and transmission to HA.

My VLC lag is fairly close to that as well, at -1000 ms for adjustment. My YouTube lag running on Chrome or as a stand alone app is about -3000 ms, however. But there’s a Chrome extension called YouTube Audio/Video Sync that can be used to adjust for it.

In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

One other thing I want to add is that if you have a YouTube video content that’s worth some setup time to get the desired audio experience from the APP2, there are ways to download it into a video file so you can play on VLC and listen via the iphone VLC Streamer.

What I’ve been able to try out successfully is the YouTube-dl script. You download the .exe version of it and run it in the command prompt with the shared URL that you copy from the YouTube video of interest. It’ll write into an .mp4 file for you. You can also add options to also download the subtitle if one’s available, or an auto-generated subtitle as well. But I tried it out with an video with auto-generated subtitle and the options for subtitle in youtube-dl didn’t work for me. I ended up using an online free service called downsub.com (you just put in the link and it generates an .srt file online for you) and that works better.

Of course all of that takes a little bit of extra time to set up, and the run time will be as long as the video because you’re capturing the stream into a video file. But it all runs in the background anyway while you do something else. When it’s done, you just load it into the Windows VLC Streamer Help for processing like with any other videos so you can get the APP2 audio experience from the iPhone.

I’ve been able to find a new script called yt-dlp, which is a newer and better and much faster version of the youtube-dl script that I mentioned in the post above. The youtube-dl script seems to stream the video and capture it in real time, so a 20 minute video clip on YouTube takes 20 minutes to download. BUT yt-dlp took only 14 seconds to download that same 20 minute video clip. So it’s not doing in real time streaming, but it seems to download it as a file or something like that, so it can do it much faster.

The downsub.com site seems to work very well to generate a subtitle file for the video, as long as the video has an autogenerated closed caption transcript available. It basically converts the transcript into an .srt file that you can name after the video name so that it’ll automatically get loaded in together with the video in VLC.

I must say that I’ve been enjoying using the Airpods Pro 2 playing on my iPhone to watch and listen to video contents through VLC on my Windows laptop, very much so. Its overall sound quality with the superb bass and the quite adequate accommodation sure beats using my listening experience with the Oticon OPN 1s via the Windows laptop Bluetooth connection to my ConnectClip.

@Volusiano said:

One other thing I want to add is that if you have a YouTube video content that’s worth some setup time to get the desired audio experience from the APP2, there are ways to download it into a video file so you can play on VLC and listen via the iphone VLC Streamer.

Tip for Premium users: In YouTube premium you can do that in a minute as you have the option to download the video at once.

I am a Premium YouTube user and I’ve tried its video download option that is available to Premium users. The main issue is that the YouTube download it into a proprietary format file tucked away somewhere in the system that it does not tell you where. And even if you can find out where that downloaded file is, it’s not playable via VLC, which is the whole point here in order to stream the audio over to the iPhone (via the Airfoil workaround), or to stream over both the video and audio to the iPhone (via the VLC Streamer workaound) so you can have the Airpods Pro 2 experience from the iPhone.

I’ve tried downloading a YouTube video as a premium YouTube user already anyway, and that 20 minute video clip I tried took forever to finish. It’s almost as if it streams the video in real-time out then write into its own hidden proprietary download file. You’d then can watch it off-line, but it has to be browsed and selected and played from a Download library inside the YouTube app (or via YouTube in a browser). It took so long that I didn’t have the patient to wait around so I cancelled it, since it defeats the purpose of getting an mp4 video file that I can use VLC on in order to drive my Airpods from the iPhone.

Yesterday I tried watching some Netflix with the Airpods in transparent mode worn inside a Bluetooth headset. It worked pretty well considering.

I assume you mean the Bluetooth headset generates the full sound and the Airpods act as your hearing aids inside picking up the sound in Transparent mode?

Wouldn’t your hearing aids work better in this kind of setup than the Airpods, assuming that you don’t have any feedback issue on the ? That’s what I do when I want to use the full size (wireless Bluetooth) headphones, wear my OPNs inside and have them pick up the sound via the Tcoil. The OPN is better at generating the highs than my Airpods.

In fact, that used to be my setup before I bought the Airpods. But I have a couple of annoying issue with that setup because it would make my head get warm and sweat in the summer with the whole big headphones cover over the ears. And if I snack while watching, the headphones would make crackling little sounds due to the movement of my jaw. The Airpods eliminates both of these issues, and it’s also much smaller and portable that I can take with me on the go anywhere.

Yes, that’s what I mean. I’ve done it in the past with the OPN1 but I got a warbling sound that annoyed me. Also, the placement of the aids above the ear meant that I had to move the headphones upwards and that was an uncomfortable fit.

With the APP2 and the headphones it does feel like I’ve got a lot of gear hanging off my ear but surprisingly it wasn’t too uncomfortable over the 90 minutes or so I had them both on. I’m sure a direct connection to the APP2 would be 100% better but without hearing accommodations it won’t do it for me.

@d_Wooluf said:

Yes, that’s what I mean. I’ve done it in the past with the OPN1 but I got a warbling sound that annoyed me. Also, the placement of the RIC aids above the ear meant that I had to move the headphones upwards and that was an uncomfortable fit.

Yeah, when I use my OPN 1 with the Sony headphones, I have to put the OPN case inside my ear well, not behind the ear, so that I can put the headphones on the way they’re supposed to be placed on without having to move it upward.

Also, I enable the Autophone mode in the OPN (see screenshot below) so that if the OPN detects the presence of a magnet (from the headphones), it automatically puts the OPN into the phone mode. This makes use of the (near field magnetic induction) coil that is used to communicate between the 2 hearing aids and double it as a mini Tcoil to pick up sound from the speaker’s magnet. This eliminates using the mics to pick up the sound from the headphones, but use the magnetic field generated by the headphones to pick up the sound magnetically. This should eliminates any feedback issue that you may have because the use of the mic is replaced by the use of the induction coil instead to pick up sound.

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@Volusiano Thanks for the hint on putting the case inside the ear well! It makes my Sony’s much more comfortable and the sound is significantly improved. I have the Philips 9030 and the HearSuite application makes no mention of an Autophone option or anything like that. It may be activated by default. In any case, sound is great and no feedback,

@johnzonie Below is a screenshot of the Philips HearSuite program. Under the Fit Instrument → Manage Program → you can Add Program (click on the + sign of an empty program slot) and you will fine 3 Telephone mode (M, MT, and T). There is also the Classroom T & M program as well. I believe the M is for Microphone, and T is for , and MT is for combined Mic and Tcoil together to pickup the sound.

So it seems like the 9030 does have a tcoil for your use, and it would be the perfect program to listen to your headphones without worrying about any kind of feedback whatsoever. Just go back to Costco and ask your there to add in one of those Tcoil programs for you.

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