LE Audio and the Future of Hearing

That does sound promising. If televisions, Alexa devices and car radios can broadcast sound in the future using this technology then there would be tremendous benefit.

I’d agree that LE audio sounds VERY promising, but something to keep in mind is that unless it’s backward compatible with other BT standards (mFi, ASHA and standard Bluetooth), one is going to need all new devices to work seamlessly with one’s other devices. Resound and Oticon seem to be promising future LE Audio compatibility with their current mFi and ASHA devices, but if want to stream from a laptop, you’ll either need a new laptop with LE Audio or some sort of intermediary device. I think Phonak’s current approach will still hold appeal for awhile. Also unknown is how intuitive BT 5.2 and LE audio will be. We seem to want devices that read our mind to somehow know what device we want to be connected to.

@MDB said:

unless it’s backward compatible with other BT standards (mFi, ASHA and standard Bluetooth),

It’s not.

@MDB said:

but if want to stream from a laptop, you’ll either need a new laptop with LE Audio or some sort of intermediary device

A dongle for the notebook should do it?

@MDB said:

Also unknown is how intuitive BT 5.2 and LE audio will be. We seem to want devices that read our mind to somehow know what device we want to be connected to.

I agree. I think it’s up to vendors to come up with paradigms/interfaces to tame connection overload. A mix of manual controls and rules I think. Do you want to get the tv audio every time you walk past it (and your significant other is watching something significant other-ish), do you want the audio to come on when you sit in a particular chair? You could have nfc tags in strategic locations eg next to the chair you sit in to watch tv, or have it strictly manual.

Yes, a BT 5.2, LE Audio dongle should do it for laptops. Might take awhile for them to come out.

I agree: dongles for LE Audio should come soon. Too much invested in big screen TVs for folk to ditch those right away. When I periodically do a search for LE audio dongles, I get a lot of products, but none claim to have the LE Audio codec. I think it will likely be sometime next year before dongles and Hearing aids come out with true LE Audio in them.

@glucas said:

Btw - not splitting hairs, but Resound was not the first bluetooth hearing aid - it was Starkey. I would be surprised even if Resound came out with bluetooth before Oticon or Phonak.

Sorry to take the KS10 thread off topic and I see the resulting discussion got moved to the LE Audio and the Future of Hearing thread (the current one). And @glucas you’ve made some great points yourself and give me too much credit for blathering on. I agree with @SpudGunner take that we’re just having a friendly in-depth discussion. But to get back to the relevance relative to KS10’s, I am very likely when my insurance rolls over in October of this year because of the great price just to get KS10’s to find out how good Phonak technology is and to take advantage of Costco’s great service with REM at every fitting adjustment, IIRC. Just hope that they’ll let me go with max experience settings and NAL-NL2 straight out of the gate! Hopefully, if there is an even better Paradise firmware update or a new Phonak premium HA, we’ll hear about it before then (although last time round, I should have waited into November, 2018 to get the Marvels’ announcement!).

Yeah, on the BT, Starkey goes down in history as the first HA to employ BT in indirect HA connectivity. The official Bluetooth site has an overall perspective on the evolution of BT in hearing technology and seems to point out that the HA industry really isn’t keeping up with what’s going on overall with BT in wearables. Cites Starkey’s use of ELI in 2005.

Bluetooth Hearing Aids Are Ready for Prime Time | Bluetooth® Technology Website2

ReSound’s claim to fame is:

ReSound was the first to deliver 2.4GHz technology in hearing aids for direct connectivity and the world’s first Made for Apple® hearing aid with direct stereo sound streaming.
Source: About ReSound: company, facts & more1

The Wikipedia article on the history of hearing aids is interesting, too. Apparently, ReSound was a leader in digital signal processing(DSP) for HA’s, having bought the rights to the Nicolet corporation DSP technology from AT&T after AT&T folded Nicolet and then other HA companies followed suit on that, as for direct 2.4 GHz connectivity, which came much later:

History of hearing aids - Wikipedia3 - on digital aids

No worries. Actually, it was a good exercise to get my head around LE Audio and try to understand the benefits. One of the things that I am most excited about, potentially, is this broadcast mechanism. It has always been a bugbear of mine that there appear to be no solutions (well there used to be a telecoil based solution - but no more) for hearing radio in a car. If the LE Audio standard would mean that car radio could be broadcast via bluetooth, that would be absolutely fantastic. It does sound way off at this stage though - assuming it did come out, the next step being that car manufacturers would implement it in their systems.

I’m sure they wouldn’t “recommend” it, but if you requested I’m pretty sure they’d do it. I didn’t have a very good experience with select-a-vent as plugs wouldn’t stay in (even with their glue or even super glue!) They ended up remaking molds for me 3 or 4 times and finally settled on fairly small vents (a little over 1mm).

I had the same problem. I just returned from my ENT who removed three wax covered plugs from my right ear. Very painful! Will not try that ever again.

Low Energy Audio and the Future of ASHA.pdf (868.6 KB)

Attached is an interesting article published at the British forum. It’s a long, sometimes technical review of where bluetooth and HAs seem to be heading. I found a worthwhile read.

@sufhl said:

Can someone clarify if Oticon More has LE Audio as this article states

I’ve only seen press releases that say the Oticon More is “ready for LE Audio”. I take that to mean that it will be upgradeable via firmware update when the LE Audio specifications are final. I have a memory of someone saying that they were told by an Oticon rep that hands free calling would not be included. I can’t find that now.

New Oticon More™ Hearing Aid Utilises Intelligent Technology to Mimic the Way...2

• The world’s first hearing aid with an on-board Deep Neural Network • Intelligent DNN trained with 12 million sound scenes from real life • New chipset with double the processing power and ei...

Thank you @cvkemp and @d_Wooluf for your replies. Very helpful. I am super excited at the idea of one universal wireless transmission instead of the FM, IR, loop…complexity we have now and broadcasting will have so many fewer hurdles (where’s that usher with the receivers? what is a telecoil and do I have one? are you sure the movies have special help for me - I never saw a sign…)

So, do I need a reality check on my enthusiasm? Three questions remain for me:

1. The SIG people talk about low latency in terms of echo but does that also mean great syncing with lip-reading off a movie screen or at a play? This seems to be an issue for the Wi-Fi large area listening systems.
2. Are we sacrificing noticeable word clarity with this final nail in the coffin for analog? (I can understand talk radio in my car better without HAs and the volume cranked.)
3. Will connectivity with such a wide variety of devices throughout our day be seamless and reliable and non-tech user friendly? Right now, connecting via BT to computer or phone is never a sure thing for me.

Hi @sufhl

We’ll probably have to wait to find out if it’s been over-hyped. It’s always possible. Eight years of development and the size of the market they’re developing for leaves me optimistic.

They’ve been stressing low latency in all of their publicity. I take that to mean audio and video in near-perfect sync. I think it also depends on how much latency is due to internal processing. That’s been hugely variable in the Android world up to now. I think the manufacturers will have to lift their game in that respect.

I’ve tried mfi for phone calls and the clarity has been amazing for me. I expect LE Audio to be better. It’s wideband audio with extended frequencies.

Reliable connectivity? We’ll have to wait and see on that one. They say that LC3 is built to be very tolerant to lost packets and degrades gracefully as range limits are reached. Hopefully…

I think the feature set looks great. It should solve some of the problems we see with BT today. Still, I’ll believe it when I see it. Err, hear it.