LE Audio and the Future of Hearing

Since latest update on 18.10. the LE Audio isn’t working anymore, well I am waiting for the next update. Fortunately I can switch to Asha.

@jedilin said:

I think Creative just released BT-W6 in the US market.
According to its spec, it supports Auracast in both Unicast (CIS) and Broadcast (BIS) modes.

So now we’re making big steps forwards. Thanks for the information @jedilin

@jedilin said:

I think Creative just released BT-W6 in the US market.

According to its spec, it supports Auracast in both Unicast (CIS) and Broadcast (BIS) modes.

I saw the specs of the BT-W6 and it shows full support for macOS. Since this is a plug and play device, macOS must provide the drivers.

I’ve been looking into whether Macs can support Bluetooth LE Audio. There’s no word from Apple on this matter.

However, I believe that LE Audio is already supported, but it is not advertised.

LEA means LE Audio, according to the Android Developer website: Audio Bluetooth de bajo consumo  |  Connectivity  |  Android Developers1

This might explain why Apple now supports birectional streaming on some MFI hearing aids. List of Made for iPhone hearing devices - Apple Support4

I think they’ve changed the MFI protocol to work over LE Audio to achieve bidirectionality.

I believe that if macOS supports LE Audio, iOS must support it too.

Perhaps @Michael_Phonak can confirm this with Phonak’s engineers using a beta version of a firmware that enables LE Audio on the Infinios.

That’s not how it works, the device is driverless, it has it’s own BT chip, Mac’s hardware is of no consequence.

I had some time to kill yesterday and I was close to an Officeworks (Australia) store so I called in to find out if any of their laptops would stream to my Philips 9050 hearing aids. I found 3. One was a Surface. Two were ‘evo’ (whatever that means). I’m a bit sad for me that I found this exciting.

I moved as far away from the Surface as I could (about 60 metres/yards?) and the connection didn’t break or waver. That impressed me. There are a lot of things I could have checked for in hindsight, but didn’t. Things such as… if I went back to the first computer I connected to, would it connect automatically? All three gave me a choice of two bitrates. They all recognised the 9050s as hearing aids. None of them showed my hearing aid programs. I’d be surprised if any of them were running the latest version of Windows.

Were they ARM or Intel/AMD laptops running Windows?

They were all Intel.

Not sure if this will help but on my S23U you connect to broadcasts through settings >connections > Bluetooth > devices gear icon. Just under the switch for LE Audio. Not the app.

If it was a Surface then it had to be ARM.

I think we need Auracast transmitters for this. They cannot lock Auracast transmitters out.

I think you will have to wait for an app on your iPhone. My guess is that you will probably see it sometime in 2025.

Note that GN made a beta app for their demonstration at Lincoln center.

Auracast at the Lincoln Center7

GN sponsored demo a smashing success using iPhone as tuner As everyone who has seen my previous posts knows, I’ve been doing Auracast demos for some time. I even created a large venue demo at the ACAud conference in May, transmitting my voice...

Makes sense. I thought perhaps with my PC plugging in the device would allow me to pair in that mode, making my PC hearing aid compatible. If that worked I should have been sorted for everything as the dongle itself saves devices for portability. Interestingly it seems that for pairing it does not look for Bluetooth LE devices.
I have contacted both Creative and Resound now. I may urge them to open up their beta via TestFlight and Android equivalent. They would do well to engage this community. Seems a bit odd to not have main selling points available when there are devices around to take advantage of it.
Of course had an inkling this wouldn’t be straight forward, but I am a tinkerer and a tester.

Will keep this topic updated on anything I find out.

I was surprised to find that the iPhone 16 Pro still didn’t support LE Audio, so sent it back to Apple for a refund. I am hoping the iPhone 17 Pro will, especially as Apple is apparently going to be using a new Apple-specific wireless chip with the iPhone 17 series. I have Resound Omnias at the moment but will buy Nexias or whatever GN Resound is selling as their best LE Audio aid by then.

So I will watch out for what you post!

MFI hearing aids works really well, and most hearing aids (not Phonak) supports MFI. So LE Audio doesn’t really add anything to iOS. In fact, I’m not even sure LC3 codec is better than what codec MFI is using.

LE Audio is useful for everything else. But I’ve still not been able to enable LE Audio on my Windows computer (and I’ve tried all available Bluetooth dongles from Intel, Qualcomm and Mediatek - also Realtek and Barrot…). They don’t include the LC3 codec, and my AMD CPU doesn’t either… So, you need an Intel CPU and probably Intel Bluetooth Adapter (and maybe it works with Qualcomm ARM CPU) to use LE Audio on Windows.

Other than Resound TV Streamer+, I’ve not found any TV adapter with Auracast support yet. I know Avantree is going to release some Auracast TV adapters early next year.