I recently purchased KS-9 aids, and they are great! They connect to my smart phone as expected, and I can answer calls, listen to music, etc. However, when I pair them with my Win10 computer, although they connect as bluetooth devices, they are listed under “Other Devices” rather than “Audio Devices.” This means I cannot stream music, youtube videos, etc to my aids. Does anyone know a workaround for this or is this a hard limitation? Thanks for any info.
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Even if the computer has Bluetooth, it is less hassle to use a Sennheiser BTD500 or 800 Bluetooth dongle on the pc, and pair the hearing aid to that. With the BTD in place you can stream and use a computer soft phone (like Skype or Jabber).
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Thanks Don. My computer does have Bluetooth, but I don’t care at all about Skype, Jabber, or other VOIP applications. I want to be able to stream music and Youtube videos. Can you stream audio from these apps with these dongles?
Yes, you can stream anything that streams.
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Perfect. Thank you so much Don. I appreciate it. Still a little put out that the KS9 will not connect to standard bluetooth on my computer though!
The computer doesn’t have the drivers and if you contact the computer company they shrug and say contact the hearing aid company. The BTD has everything you need. An additional benefit of the BTD is that it can be easily moved from computer to computer.
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You can definitely use your KS9’s with the Bluetooth on your PC. To do so you must work within the limitation of the KS9 to be paired with only one device at a time.
Since the KS9 can only be paired to one device at a time, what you need to do is “un-pair” from your phone by choosing the Bluetooth “Forget” option on your phone.
Once you are un-paired from your phone you can then “Pair” to the Bluetooth on your PC. To pair you must turn your KS9’s OFF and then ON again by opening the battery doors and then closing them again. Your computer should then recognize your KS9’s as a new audio device and Pair to them.
To go back to your phone again, you must reverse the procedure. You must choose the Bluetooth “un-pair” or “Forget” option on your computer. Then choose the Bluetooth “Pair” option on your phone again. It just takes a bit of practice to get the procedure to work.
It’s a bit convoluted to jockey back and forth between the “un-pairing” and “pairing” the phone and “un-pairing” and “pairing” the computer but once you get the hang of it, it is do-able and works just fine. It’s just convoluted and time consuming to do.
My Marvels worked that way until they got the 2.0 firmware update that allowed them to be “paired” to more than one device at a time.
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Thanks TraderGary, that worked like a charm!
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Gary, thanks for this tip. That got me part of the way there but on my Toshiba laptop, it still won’t connect.
It shows up on the Add a Device screen list, select R-KS9.0 and it says Connecting… But then fails with the message, “we didn’t get any response from the device. please try again”. Weird. Connects with Android phone just fine.
Any ideas??
Okay - tried a 4th (lost count) time and it says ‘device is ready’ - yeah, but the device is not recognized as audio, the icon looks like a phone, even though the headset icon was displayed when it was connecting. geez…
Thanks in advance!!
Toby
Toby, since you can only connect with one device at a time you must “disconnect” from your phone before connecting with your computer. The easy thing to do is to simply turn Bluetooth OFF on your phone. Then connecting should work with your laptop.
Something to add to this is the TV connector. He could connect a TV connector to his laptop, it wouldn’t count as his Bluetooth connection. He could continue to stay connected to his phone.
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Thanks, but turning off Bluetooth on the phone didn’t help. HAs aren’t discovered. One time they showed up and I clicked pair, but then it timed out with a can’t connect error. I’ve used other bt devices with it (Toshiba) like mouse and bt speakers. I’ll keep playing with it.
I went through many iterations on this. I occasionally could get the HAs to pair as an audio device on Win10, but often it would only pair as voice, so you could not hear streaming audio. I finally purchased the Sennheisser 800 dongle, and it worked quite reliably, for about four weeks. Then parts started coming loose from the dongle.
Unfortunately, I do think you need an intermediary device to make this work reliably. The TV connector was recommended by Phonak. I have a much cheaper dongle coming, and if that doesn’t work long term, I will buy the TV connector.
One note: streaming a lot really diminishes battery life.
You can buy a KS9 TV connector at Costco for $100 at the hearing aid center. That can be hooked up to your laptop or PC.
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I’ve got nothing else to offer. All I can say is that we are using different devices, KS9 vs Marvel. Kate and I both have Marvels and pair with our Pixel phones and several Windows 10 computers with never a problem. I recently purchased an iPad 12.9, 1TB model for sight reading piano music scores and no problem connecting with an Apple device either.
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TraderGary, yes, a downside of going with the more generic version at Costco is that you got a firmware upgrade that fixed a lot of bluetooth issues. We did not!
My wife has KS9 aids and I have Phonak Audeo M90 RT aids. Both connect to Bluetooth equally. Both sets of aids connect to the Costco KS9 TV connector equally. This TV connector does not count as the one or two Bluetooth connections each have.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to drop this project and just use headphones. Not worth the trouble, especially since it drains batteries. Thanks again.