If you are speaking about the Marvel and KS9, I believe they use Bluetooth Classic to communicate to one hearing aid only, and then use Classic again to relay audio to the other ear.
No, they use BLE to relay the channel to the other HA. There is no profile in BT Classic that supports dual devices.
Ok, but the limitation is that they are using 2.4 GHz to go ear to ear. That frequency does not go through your head well…
To Sierra:
But it seems to be working anyway. Who knew.
In general:
I have an idea for an mfi experiment. It’ll need two people.
Pair mfi aids with an idevice so that it’s all working as intended. Play a track that clearly distinguishes left and right stereo like any early Beatles stereo (not mono) song.
Have one person with one aid nearish the idevice. Have another person take the other aid further away. Say across the house or outside or whatever. The test is to see how far away the other aid can be and still be playing.
Then switch the aids. The one that was close now goes further and the other stays close.
Is there any difference in distance? Functionality? Sound?
I can only imagine that was just the beginning of experimental development made by Phonak engineers.
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There are many things that provoked me in this thread but I’ll just comment on one thing.
BT Classic is not old our outdated. Any more than WiFi is old and outdated. New improvements, features and protocols are added every year or so, in both cases.
BLE and related off-protocol MFi and ASHA music streaming are newer developments and they will take hold in the market as manufacturers (on the transmitting end and the receiving end) see fit. And vice-versa.
BT Classic is supported on far more transmitting devices than MFi or ASHA, so until you have more widespread transmitting device support for ASHA it’ll be a cart-before-the-horse problem to get manufacturers of receiving devices to support it.
MFi support on the transmitting end is and always will be exclusively on iPhones (which have a smaller marketshare than Android) so it will be a consideration for manufacturer support on the receiving end as (and if) ASHA becomes more prevalent among transmitting devices. Not only cell phones could transmit ASHA but also headphone-related transmitters, if headphone manufacturers decide to support ASHA on the receiving end.
You could have an explosion of ASHA devices across transmitting and receiving devices. MFi will only be on whatever devices Apple has and decides to support.
My guess is that you’ll never see BT Classic discontinued, but you will see an increase in the lower power BLE-related procotol support.
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But Phonak doesn’t allow Costco to call it a Phonak or even a Marvel? Isn’t it something like a ks9 or something like that?
Maybe my memory is wrong but I thought that they had proprietary chips/algorithms that made using BT Classic more efficient than it otherwise would be, i.e., any old HA manufacturer cannot run out and implement a BT Classic solution without suffering a more serious battery drain, which Phonak has partially but not completely overcome.
This is what I’m referring to, coming from the following article posted on the main HT website: How Phonak Achieved Universal Bluetooth Hearing Aid Connectivity
SWORD not only utilizes Bluetooth Classic but also supports Bluetooth LE and other protocols. Its combination of features, all integrated on a single hearing aid chip, overcomes the battery life and audio streaming limitations of earlier chipsets.
For example, the SWORD chip has improved radio sensitivity, which enables it to handle the power demands of Bluetooth Classic. It reduces power consumption while maintaining excellent link distance and link stability. And to overcome the Bluetooth limitation of streaming to one ear only, the Phonak team developed a dedicated algorithm that extends the Bluetooth capabilities to allow streaming to both ears.
Tech companies can do whatever they want internal to their product. That’s not what I’m interested in. It’s the open-ness of their product to connect to anything else.
Kinda like a plain old power plug. It got standardized to a geographic region. You’re not going to be in business long stocking a European power plug in your Plugs R Us store in Topeka. Or stocking a lamp that only has that plug. Standards.
So it should be with connecting to things with tech products. I’m not interested in being trapped inside the manufacturer product offerings like those necklace doodads. Or Apple.
The guy who coined the phrase “solution in search of a problem.” 
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When I refer to BT Classic as “old”, that’s because it became available years ago, long before anyone envisioned using it with earbuds or hearing aids. Bluetooth headsets of the day were single ear monophonic devices, so HSP, HFP and A2DP have no concept of a server streaming dual channel audio to left and right devices. HFP was originally designed for connecting mobile phones to in-car hands-free systems. Just look at the hoops Phonak had to jump through to implement HFP and A2DP in the Marvels. It’s not exactly elegant and it’s rough around the edges as a result. Well-documented problems with this include drop-outs and asymmetric battery usage. WiFi is also a relatively old standard and is also long-in-the-tooth. Well-documented problems with WiFi are channel interference and security vulnerabilities. If WiFi was developed again using a clean sheet of paper, it would probably look very different,
BLE was envisioned to be a next-generation platform for new applications, such as MFi and ASHA. In addition to being more power efficient, they also stream directly to the left and right devices.
Since MFi and ASHA, in particular, are relatively new, BT Classic will have a much bigger market share for the foreseeable future, but eventually the old BC Classic profiles will be displaced by new BLE profiles. Eventually, there will be an open HA standard. Who knows, maybe Google will donate ASHA to the BT SIG.
I’m still hoping for an official LE standard that’s not ASHA or mfi, that’s applicable to headphones and hearables as much as hearing aids, that’s low latency, and available on your tv and at your cinema. Bluetooth SIG is testing isochronous channels solutions at a couple of locations in the coming month. It may happen.
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I’m not sure of the point. My ears (I hope) stay the same distance apart. I have pulled the battery drawer on each aid independently and only that aid goes off, if you were trying to confirm that the communication is independent. This is with KS8 and iPhone 7.
I look at it the other way around. Phonak got the privilege to manufacture a Kirkland Signature product. I suspect there will be more KS9’s sold in the next year than Marvels.
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It only has the “openess” when it has the propietary internal parts. Phonak has not made the technology open-source so only a Phonak product will work efficiently in a battery-limited HA if you want efficient BT Classic streaming and communication between ears. Other OEM’s could try to come up with their own solution but maybe there are some key ideas that Phonak has patented - if anyone could easily duplicate Phonak’s achievement, I doubt Phonak would have gone for it. The key idea here relative to your analogy of electric plugs is that other OEM’s without considerable development costs and development resources cannot similarly make an “open” plug like Phonak’s - so Phonak’s plug is not really “open” and not like any other run-of-the-mill plug. It’s a special proprietary plug for which you cannot divorce what’s inside from how it performs outside and it’s “universal” but not “open” - important difference between the two word usages.
I am not knocking Phonak. If I hadn’t just bought ReSound Quattro’s maybe I would have trialed and gotten the Marvels instead and probably loved them, just like lots of other folks on the forum. I am just for clarity as far as reality goes and what we are discussing. That’s all. 
What you didn’t mention, Jim, is the SWORD chip. This nano technology chip is what makes it all work. Anyone could have committed the years and engineering required to develop the SWORD chip. Phonak is the only one that did.
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@TraderGary. I mentioned the SWORD chip in my previous post in this thread but I am so wordy that it’s hard for anyone to keep up with what I ramble on about! 
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OK! Well heck, I got to mention it again! 
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It’s sonova branded and they are clear when asked that it is not a “Marvel” product
Anyone thinking about getting a Pixel 4 or 4 XL might want to wait until Black Friday sales. Reading something elsewhere the other day and the blogger remarked that last year he waited until Black Friday and was able to buy a Pixel 3 XL for $450. My dim recollection is that the 3 XL had some initial problems, which may in part be the reason for the sweet deal that Google offered then. But if Google puts the price of a Pixel 4 XL in that ballpark for this year’s Black Friday, I may follow TraderGary’s impulse and get one, too. Unfortunately some of the online “reveals” of Pixel 4 features have shown klunky behavior in bootlegged prototypes that are being blogged about - hope the released version fixes everything up!
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