I’m not sure in what context you’re asking this question. The Target gain curve is what the amplification of the HA should reach across the frequencies in order to meet your hearing loss need. That’s what REM is calibrated against. P1 is just the name of the first program that the HA defaults to upon startup.
But if I have to guess your question, you’re probably asking whether the gain curve in P1 should equal to the Target curve shown by the mfg or not. My guess is that if your Costco HCP has done REM properly, then the P1 gain curve should match very close to the Target curve. But if REM is not done, then perhaps they don’t match as well.
Although it’s possible that the HA mfg may decide to design to mix the Tcoil down to mono, I just don’t see any advantage for them to just dumb it down like that, especially if there are 2 tcoils, one for each hearing aid, so they’d actually probably have to do some more work to dumb it down and mix it into mono. For example, if you apply a telephone handset (the old landline kind that has a speaker on the top and a mic at the bottom) to your right ear for a phone call, only the right HA would pick up the sound and I don’t expect the left HA to pick up and sound anything. If the mfg wants to route the sound to the left ear so that you can hear on both side, I would think that the mfg would have to provide users with a special switch to enable so that it can use the NFMI protocol to route the sound on the right HA to the left HA, which is more work and will consumer more battery juice. But then by virtual of having a switch to enable cross hearing, then you can just not enable it to get the stereo effect.
The same with listening to headphones using Tcoil. Why would the mfg be dumb enough to force the 2 tcoils mix into a mono track when a stereo experience would be desired by the users? There’s really no good reason to force the 2 tcoils into a mono mix unless only one side is getting the sound and you want to hear that sound on the other side as well, as explained above, in which case mono is a choice given to select which means you can choose and not be forced into mono.
Of course if you use tcoils in a church or a movie theater, there’s probably only 1 induction sound loop and not 2 because there’s probably no protocol to differentiate left and right. The tcoil will probably just pick up whatever it picks up. So in this case, the mono limitation is not within the HAs, but it’s from the source as is.
And yes, you’re right that it’s easy to try. Put on a set of headphones and listen to a known stereo sound track to see if it sounds stereo or mono. I’ve used headphones to watch movies all the times on my OPN 1 set (with the ear piece inside my ear wells) and I didn’t notice any mono mix down effect if I recall correctly.
The item 3 above highlighted in bold in my post #74 on this thread needs to be revisited.
Today I got a chance to talk with another Apple Specialist on the Airpods. This guy seems a lot more knowledgeable and therefore more credible in my opinion than the first guy that I talked to the last time as reported in post #74 (partially shown above for reference). I had some other questions for him regarding spatial audio compatibility (which I’ll share later in another post later), but I thought just for kick, I’d ask him the same question #3 about the Transparency mode that I asked the first guy again, simply because I wanted to verify the consistency of Apple’s answer on the subject, because to tell you the truth, I didn’t find the first guy to be very credible in his answer in the first place. That’s because he didn’t know my answer to questions 1 and 2, had to “confer”, then he came back after a very long “confer”, I unexpectedly threw in the question #3 above and he got blustered and didn’t want to go back to “confer” again, so he gave me his answer that I felt was kind of a “blow off” just to get me off his back, but not necessarily a credible answer in my opinion.
Anyway, to make the long story short, this new Apple Specialist that I talked with today immediately told me the OPPOSITE of what the first guy did, that the Transparency model on the AirPods does not do any audiogram accommodation whatsoever, even if you get the audiogram accommodation from the iPhone via streaming audio content from the iPhone. He said that it’s because they’re 2 different paths entirely. The streaming audio path originates from the iPhone, gets the audiogram accommodation because the audiogram can be found from the Health app (as made available and selected by your choice in Headphones Accommodation → Customized Audio Setup). So the iPhone gives the boosted aid based on the audiogram it finds before sending this streaming audio path to the Airpods via Bluetooth.
However, the Transparency mode is handled SOLELY by the hardware (namely the H2 chip) on the AirPods Pro 2. The mics on the pods pick up the ambient sounds, and the related setting parameters from the iPhone (like Transparency volume, Adaptive (loud noise suppression), on or off for Transparency toggle), then the H2 chip processes this independent ambient audio path accordingly based on the related parameters, and this separate hardware-generated audio path eventually gets mixed with the software based (audiogram induced) streaming audio path sent by the iPhone.
This second Apple Specialist maintained to me that at NO time does the audiogram information gets uploaded from the iPhone to the AirPods so that the ambient sounds path as picked up by the mics gets that aided boost like how the streaming audio path is done. He said that audiogram accommodation is strictly a software-based feature that gets processed by the iPhone for that path, while the ambient sound picked up by the AirPods mics is a completely separate path processed strictly by the hardware inside the pods. The 2 paths eventually meet and get mixed, but one is processed via software with the audiogram (the streaming audio from the iPhone), and the other is processed via hardware without the audiogram.
Anyway, I’m just updating this new information because the previous answer and this answer by the 2 Apple Specialist at 2 different times directly conflicts each other. You can choose to believe whomever’s answer that makes more sense to you. I personally believe the 2nd guy’s answer more, because it’s consistent with my experience with hearing the ambient sounds in my AirPods. It’s clear as day to me that my streaming audio is audiogram aided. But I never feel like the ambient sounds ever get aided TO ME. I know that some of the posters on this thread shared that they feel that their Transparency mode is aided. I have no idea why they could hear the aid when I don’t. Although I’d want to clarify that “aid” in my book is not just the ability to hear ambient sounds in Transparency, but the ability to hear it as “aided” by the audiogram. So “aid” in other people’s book may be simpler. Maybe to them it’s just the ability to hear the amplified ambient sounds, and not necessarily have the clarity provided by the “aided” amplifying compensation.
To consider the AirPods Pro 2 to be similar to hearing aids, it must have audiogram accommodation NOT ONLY when streaming, but most importantly, it must have audiogram accommodation in the Transparency mode so you can hear aided ambient sounds and speech around you.
Based on the post I just updated on this thread (post #149), I would not call the AirPods Pro 2 similar to Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids at all.
So here’s some more findings I want to share here about the Spatial Audio feature of the AirPods Pro 2. I’ve been using it to watch movies that have Dolby 5.1 or 7.1 or Dolby Atmos on my iphone, or with the audio streamed to my iPhone from VLC in my Windows 11 laptop, then played on the AirPods which are connected to my iphone, and the spatial audio sounds wonderful for movies that have multi-channel audio content.
I have an NVidia Shield TV media player hooked up to my big-screen TV that I want to enjoy watching movies using my AirPods Pro and specifically using its spatial audio feature. However, I learned that, as expected, the Airpods spatial audio feature will not work via regular BT connection with a non-Apple device. The AirPods Pro would have to be connected to an Apple-type device ( like the iPhone, iPads, Macs, and Apple TV media player) for you to enjoy this feature.
So now if I want to enjoy movies on my big screen 4K TV using the Airpods and most importantly, with spatial audio enabled, I have to now buy an Apple TV 4K media player. OK, so not a big deal. An Apple TV 4K Wifi with 64 GB storage 3rd gen is only $124 on Amazon → affordable enough to be able to watch in silence via the AirPods yet still being able to enjoy Spatial Audio, right?
Wrong… guess what? For HOH folks like us, the Apple TV media player does not have audiogram accommodation support. So far only the iPhone does. And maybe newer gen iPads that has the Apple Health app support? (my older iPad doesn’t). This was confirmed via a support call with Apple. It went from a chat to a phone call to another Apple Specialist on AirPods, then to another Apple Specialist on Apple TV before I get my (dreaded) confirmation.
Thanks so much for the info in your report, @Volusiano I usually use my APP2’s in the gym when loud music is playing. (Hip-hop is not my favorite!) Noise reduction is very effective. But with no music and in transparency mode, speech is never as clear as with my aids. This explains it!
Just as a follow-up on this limitation to get around being able to watch a movie on my big screen instead of my small Windows laptop and still be able to get spatial acoustic from the AirPods, I thought about it some more and I guess the obvious workaround for me is to just play my movies through VLC on Windows 11 like before, but “cast” it on the big screen TV using the Google Chrome → Cast → Screen option. This option keeps the subtitle intact, because if you cast from VLC to Chromecast, the .srt subtitle is not supported by Chromecast.
Obviously the limitation to casting is that I’m not going to get to see 4K contents like if they were played from my 4K Nvidia Shield media player, because my Windows 11 laptop only supports 1080p top. However, since I have an Nvidia Shield Pro that can upscale 720p and 1080p videos to 4K, I guess that’s as close as I can get to the real 4K, but in return I get the spatial audio experience when watching by myself in silence. So that’s a very acceptable compromise to me. Heck, I don’t even have to buy an Apple TV 4K media player either.
I’ve discovered that not only does spatial audio sound more real thanks to the 3 dimensional aspect with the various sound location placements, but for a HOH person like me, I can also definitely notice the better clarity of the sounds as well, because they’re separated out into different locations, and not bunched together into just 2 stereo channels which can easily get blended in and muddied up amongst themselves. So now that I’ve experienced not just the liveliness but also the clarity of spatial audio, there’s no going back for me.
Don’t know if this helps at all – I’m not the videophile in the house – but our TV is Apple TV-enabled. My iPhone has a screen mirroring option in set up. When I tap screen mirroring, my iPhone screen displays on the TV. Wonder if you could do something similar if you had the Apple TV 4K media player? No idea about latency, quality, etc…
Yes, most media players (like your Apple TV 4K or my Nvidia Shield TV Pro) have some kind of cast option built into them. Mine is ChromeCast. So like how I’m able to cast from my Windows 11 laptop to my Nvidia Shield TV, you should be able to cast from your iPhone to your Apple TV 4K media player easily because they’re both within the Apple ecosystem, so probably AirPlay will be used to achieve this. I believe AirPlay can cast in 4K. So if you have a movie service like Netflix or Hulu etc, as long as it supports 4K playing on your iPhone, you should be able to cast it to your Apple TV 4K media player in 4K. Then you can use the AirPods Pro 2 to enjoy spatial audio on those movies if their audio content is multi-channel.
My NVidia Shield TV is not compatible with Airplay, however, unless I have to pay subscription for a third party app like AirScreen to cast from my iPhone to my NVidia Shield TV. So in my case it’s cheaper to cast from my laptop for free. The difference is that in my case I can’t cast 4K from my laptop like you can AirPlay cast 4K from your iPhone, but then the AI Upscaling to 4K on my Shield makes up for this loss.
But you pointed out something that definitely helps, that 4K AirPlay casting from the iPhone to an Apple TV 4K media player is definitely a great option, given that the Apple TV 4K media player costs only $124 on Amazon. So I definitely have the option to buy an Apple TV 4K media player after all if I find that I want to watch a lot of 4K video content from my iPhone to the big screen to get the AirPods Pro 2 spatial audio experience.
One thing further to add is that some app that is available for iOS like the YouTube app has their own internal casting option that can cast to a ChromeCast device (like my NVidia shield). But that option is only local to that particular app only, it’s not the same as screen casting or screen mirroring. Furthermore, the YouTube casting option to ChromeCast TVs completely takes over the playback and will send both the video and audio to the TV, which defeats the purpose here of being able to listen to the AirPods on your iPhone while casting. You don’t even see the video playing on your iPhone anymore (let alone hear the audio), although you can do action controls like play/pause, etc from the iPhone. It looks like there are third party apps that can separate out the video and audio to let you cast just the video and keep the audio local (like LocalCast), if you’re willing to use them and possibly pay for them.
Just to add to what @Volusiano has said to share that in my experience, the audiogram is only loaded for content streaming from the phone that loaded the audiogram. This appears to mean you can’t use the audiogram boost for any other device which is a huge bummer.
I connected my AirPods Pro 2 to my iPhone (from where I loaded my audiogram), then simultaneously connected to my son’s iPad. Content streaming from the iPad didn’t provide the audiogram boost.
I then confirmed that the audiogram was still loaded on my iPhone, disconnected from the iPad (used “forget this device”) and connected the APP2 to my iMac. Streaming from the iMac, even while connected to my iPhone, also did not provide the audiogram boost.
Thanks for all your research and contributions, @Volusiano! Apple should hire you!
I state that I don’t know the Apple world and therefore I don’t quite understand how Apple TV 4k or Nvidia Shield works, but I would like to ask one thing: if I connect the AirPods pro to my htpc via BT, can I still take advantage of the spatial audio?
So, if I want to continue using my htpc as source (as player I use JRiver Media Center software ) and I want to use the spatial audio of the AirPod pro I should connect the htpc to the Nvidia Shield TV and the latter to the TV/projector?
You would have to use an Apple TV 4K media player in order for your AirPods Pro 2 to be able to play spatial audio. But then the Apple TV 4K media player does not support audiogram accommodation like the iPhone does for the AirPods Pro 2. So it’s pointless to have spatial audio but without audiogram accommodation, assuming that you’re hard of hearing and need the audiogram accommodation first and foremost.
