Drawback of having bluetooth classic stereo audio

ssa · April 30, 2019, 1:05pm

I have UP receiver on my Quattro rechargable. I never seen my hearing aid drop below 50% from 100% in one day. I firmly believe that Bluetooth classic master slave configuration is just terrible to be used as a hearing aid and CI. What if you have a CI in that ear and a hearing aid on the other ear. HA gets upgraded every 1-3 years while CI every 4-5 years.

How do they make sure that the hearing aid is compatable with CI to various streaming accessory? make streaming independent from HA and CI, this adds benefit of not sending data to the other side and not to worry about the hearing aid mfg changing the hearing aid to match the CI backward compatibility

chrluc · April 30, 2019, 1:21pm

Obviously what I said about people’s need to defend their purchase and to find faults in other products, went in one ear and out the other. Maybe that’s why they supposedly get better battery life…

Don · April 30, 2019, 1:23pm

Agree. I think Phonak changed the game with their introduction but I’m sure other manufacturers have tested this in research and will introduce their own version of classic Bluetooth hearing aids.

darylm · April 30, 2019, 6:25pm

This is an interesting prediction. I guess we’ll see what happens. I’m thinking it will go the other way, towards BLE.

Don · April 30, 2019, 8:20pm

BLE would limit the devices you could connect to, to just a phone. Classic would connect to laptops, tablets, and generic Bluetooth transmitters. If Classic is a viable option, it would be the obvious choice. Phonak has shown it is possible. Up to Resound and the others to refine it and put pressure back on Phonak.

anon66854306 · April 30, 2019, 9:55pm

Excellent post, @chrluc.

jim_lewis · April 30, 2019, 10:14pm

Perhaps in the best of all possible worlds it would be like Wi-Fi connectivity with backwards compatibility built into a newer BT standard in HA’s, e.g., do MFI or MFA or some combined standard but still allow you, if you want to burn HA battery, to do BT Classic from an HA.

TV’s, stereos, headphones do get old and die or just get worn out. Since smartphones are a big driving force for connectivity to everything (HA’s included), I think you’ll see whatever BT standard prevails in smartphones take over the future world of devices. And I think most people would be frustrated by Phonak’s connect-one-device-at-a-time-only limitation as a number of Marvel users in the forum have already grumbled about.

OTH, the Bluetooth SIG has supposedly been working on a HA BT protocol since something like 2014 and the eventual appearance of such a standard is still only hinted at (a poster in the forum a few weeks back hinted such a standard was finally about to appear). Maybe it’s like the Blu-Ray encoding standard. The various interest groups can’t agree because if patents, copyrights, etc., are involved, the entity(ies) whose special protocol or hardware are involved is going to end up collecting royalties from everyone else for the adoption (believe that was the Blu-Ray sticking point back in the day).

darylm · April 30, 2019, 10:51pm

As long as people are giving honest opinions pro/con about the products, there is nothing wrong with discussion. The reality is that there are legitimate pros / cons about all the products. There is no product that’s a clear winner in all aspects. In theory, Phonak Marvels could have been a “game changer”, but there are notable flaws in the product, such as single pairing, unreliable connections and asymmetric battery consumption. I wasn’t bothered by the battery consumption, but single pairing and unreliable connections were show-stoppers. The MFi implementation on the other hand, is much more seamlessly integrated and it’s not unreasonable to think that the Android BLE implementation will also be an improvement over Bluetooth Classic.

darylm · April 30, 2019, 10:55pm

You don’t necessarily need Bluetooth Classic to connect with a laptop. My laptop will connect with the Opn HAs, even though there is no need to do so, because audio is streamed from the connectclip, not from the HAs. All that’s required to use a BLE device on a laptop is a driver. With that, there would be no need for Bluetooth Classic. I guess we will have to wait and see what the others do.

ssa · April 30, 2019, 11:05pm

I think there will be a ASHA driver that the manufacture provides for BLE streaming. ASHA source code is open. It is only a matter of time til someone makes a driver compatible with other OS.

d_Wooluf · May 1, 2019, 5:13am

I’d probably seriously consider the Bluetooth Classic route if I were in the market today. I also believe that A2DP (Classic) and Made For … protocols are all stopgap measures. My bet is that eventually Bluetooth SIG will announce official low energy audio standards. How long are we all prepared to wait?

jim_lewis · May 1, 2019, 5:49am

For those betting on Bluetooth Classic as the way to go, here’s an August, 2018, article on BT 5.0 LE from How To Geek. It basically says if you have a BT 5.0 LE devices, you’ll have a lot better audio experience with a lot less power consumption than BT Classic and says that BT 5.0 LE is backwards compatible with BT Classic, so you can still use it with legacy devices. All someone needs to do is figure how how to apply it to HA’s and somehow incorporate the possibility of bidirectionality if one wants to use HA microphones as a phone/speaking microphone. Quote from article: https://www.howtogeek.com/343718/whats-different-in-bluetooth-5.0/

"If you can get your hands on an Android phone with Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth 5.0 headphones, you’ll likely have a much better wireless audio experience than you would with the older Bluetooth standard.

iPhone users can get a good experience with Apple’s own AirPods or Beats headphones thanks to the W1 chip, but solid Bluetooth audio is easier to get on Android now, too. Bluetooth 5.0 should even improve wireless headphones on the iPhone if you choose to go for third-party Bluetooth 5.0 headphones instead of Apple headphones with a W1 chip.

We don’t recommend upgrading every last little thing, however. Even if you have a Bluetooth 5.0-enabled laptop, for example, upgrading to a Bluetooth 5.0-enabled mouse probably won’t be a big improvement. But, as support for Bluetooth 5.0 finds its way into every new Bluetooth device, Bluetooth peripherals will get better and Bluetooth will become more reliable and power-efficient."

The following article just comparing BT 4.2 LE to BT Classic says that BT 4.2 LE normally consumes only 1 to 5% of the power of Bluetooth Classic and never more than 50% of the power that Bluetooth Classic would. So in a battery limited device like a HA, for someone who likes to do a lot of streaming, that’s a big hit on battery life (as the big proportional drop in Marvel battery life doing relative little BT Classic streaming well illustrates). Bluetooth Classic Vs Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) : Whats different

The How to Geek article notes that higher data transfer capacity of BT 5.0 LE compared to BT 4.x LE.

Edit_Update: Example of effect BT 4.2 LE and Apple’s W1 chip have on BT streaming taken from another How to Geek article: https://www.howtogeek.com/340290/what-is-apple’s-w1-chip/

“As well as making pairing and switching devices a lot easier, the W1 chip also increases the range of the Bluetooth connection and gives headphones a better battery life. For example, the Beats Solo3 has a battery life that lasts 40 hours and a range of up to 150 feet. Those numbers are just insane for Bluetooth.”

d_Wooluf · May 1, 2019, 9:27am

Hmmm. I’ve been seeing “Bluetooth 5” headphones and buds advertised for a while now, and I still have no idea what they’re on about. What about them is Bluetooth 5? Any Bluetooth audio that’s “open” uses A2DP, which is a Bluetooth Classic protocol. Afaik, nothing about Bluetooth Classic changed in Bluetooth 5. It just incorporates it. So when the guy says you’re going to get a much better wireless audio experience with BT 5, my bs meter goes off the scale. In the same vein, he seems to think that Samsung’s dual audio feature has something to do with a new BT 5 feature. No. It’s simply two separate Bluetooth Classic connections.

jim_lewis · May 1, 2019, 9:50am

@d_Wooluf When I have time, I’ll go right to the BT 5.0 spec at the Bluetooth site. But perhaps this should satisfy you for now. It’s a review of the BT 5.0 SIG standard shortly after it was created and what it means about audio quality, range, and energy consumption in BT 5.0 LE

In general I’ve found How to Geek articles to contain high-quality, accurate information. Maybe it’s you that are misinformed…

And here is a more technical review of how BT 5.0 LE can carry large amounts of data at high speed with low energy consumption including audio by “hacking” advert channels or by further revision and support in the 5.0 spec (as reviewed in 2017). There is now a BT 5.1 spec out as of January, 2019, but I didn’t see any revision that to my naive eye looked like it affected audio transmission.

" The high speed PHY also lays down the foundation for the potential introduction of audio over BLE (similar to current Bluetooth Classic, defined here as any Bluetooth specification before BTv4.0, audio capability) which will potentially be introduced in a future revision, although Bluetooth 5 already makes provisions for the possibility of broadcasting audio (or synchronous data) over advert channels."

d_Wooluf · May 1, 2019, 11:19am

I’m frequently misinformed. In this case, I really don’t think so. I’ve read the quoted passage and counted 2 ‘potential’ and 1 ‘possibility’. There is no open BLE audio standard. The only open audio standard is a2dp which is part of Bluetooth classic. Subsumed by, but not changed by BT 5.

So, lots of potential, but as of now, buying BT 5 phone and headphones will not change your listening experience in the slightest. He implies otherwise, especially when he says…

“If you’ve held off on wireless headphones because you preferred the clean, lossless sound of wired, you might give Bluetooth 5.0 a shot.”

A strong implication that the benefits of BT 5 are realisable in audio now. They’re not.

jim_lewis · May 1, 2019, 11:35am

Don’t know if it’s really for real but you can find a number of “foreign” earbuds on Amazon that claim that they are operating on BT 5.0 audio and some of the reviewers claim that they get great battery life and distance. Anything resembling a BT 5.0 headphone is harder to find.

The particular one above seems pretty popular, about 2,000 reviews, supposedly.

The Jabra Elite 85h is a BT 5.0 compliant headset but it looks like it uses all Bluetooth Classic audio profiles. Presumably, if audio is officially integrated into BT 5.x, it will be upgradeable. It only has 10 m of connectivity. https://www.jabra.com/_/media/Jabra_VXi_Product-Documentation/Jabra-Elite-85h/Technical-specifications/RevA/Jabra-Elite-85h-Techsheet-A4-WEB.pdf

d_Wooluf · May 1, 2019, 12:19pm

BT 5 may be referring to the low energy connection between the two buds. That might be a proprietary solution built on BT 5. I’ve also seen headsets advertised as BT 5. That might be technically true because the BT 5 spec encompasses BT classic, but it’s a misrepresentation I think. Trying to fool people that they’re buying ‘new and improved’ when they’re really buying ‘same old’.

jim_lewis · May 1, 2019, 12:21pm

Seems to be so, unfortunately! That it’s just a sales-come-on…

Don · May 1, 2019, 7:41pm

No, we are talking about connections without an intermediate device, so if the hearing aids did BLE only it would mean, currently, a smartphone only connection. The breakthrough that Phonak started, and they and other companies will refine, is classic Bluetooth connections to a variety of devices without an intermediate device.

I have the Phonak Compilot 2 intermediate device and it is fabulous, but intermediate devices have been out for a long time. My first was the original Resound Phone Clip (not the Phone Clip+) in 2011 and it worked OK but it had several shortcomings that the Phone Clip+ mostly answered in 2013.

darylm · May 1, 2019, 8:12pm

I’m not talking about an intermediate device. Most modern devices (laptops, tablets, phones) support both bluetooth classic and BLE. My laptop does, for example. It will pair directly with the HAs, but it just can’t do anything with them, because there is no driver and app. My android phone also pairs with the HAs, not for streaming, but for the Opn app to work. (There is no Opn app for a laptop, but there could be.) If the HA manufacturer made a driver, it would be possible to stream from a laptop over BLE, similarly to a smartphone.