Phonak introduces Marvel platform and Audéo M hearing aids

Ha, ha. Funny guy. I use a Compilot 2 and connect to multiple devices at one time. It is disappointing the Marvel doesn’t do that and also disappointing you can’t use a Compilot 2 with it. But it’s shocking that many are reporting they can pair to only one device, although some have reported they could pair to more than one and start/stop connections to switch between them.

True. Worldwide Android market-share is currently 88%. iPhone is 11.7%.

So what everyone has the right to what he likes. There is too much stuff we don’t like pushed done our throats.

Just for the record, I just transferred my Marvel pairing from my iPhone XS to my iPad. It took one minute flat. Most of that was waiting for the devices to wake up, and the HA to reboot for pairing. I leave the app connection on the phone alone.
Step 1: forget the connected marvel on the phone
Step 2: temporarily disable Bluetooth on the phone (may be overkill)
Step,3: put iPad in pairing mode
Step 4: power cycle HA for pairing
Step 5: connect when prompted
Step 6: re enable Bluetooth on phone
Works smoothly every time. Admittedly a pia, but easily done in one minute. A small price to pay for the streaming quality. Hopefully soon improved by Phonak.

Wow!! You are the first person who has clearly laid out the process and I agree that one minute is really not that big a deal so I guess I’m wondering why so many people are making such a fuss?? With the rechargeable aids you can power them down and up without even removing them so that is easy. I am curious, do you have to power both aids down or just the “primary” one?
Anyway, I’ve had my Marvels for a little over two months and they have been fantastic. With all the fanfare about forgetting/pairing/unpairing I haven’t even tried. I just leave them connected to my iPhone 7 Plus all the time. Could have gone with a MFI set of hearing aids like the Quattros but I wanted the hands free calling (which has worked flawlessly) and the excellent music streaming with the Marvels. I’ve decided to go ahead and purchase the TV Connector so I can listen to the TV watching stuff my wife hates and put the TV in Mute. Also, the TV Connector apparently will connect to my MacBook Pro for watching videos and skyping so I guess I really don’t need to forget/pair/forget/pair anyway but its good to know its not really a big deal.

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The only aid that needs to be power cycled is the designated Bluetooth one. By default it is the right. As far as my findings for the iPhone sequence, the reason that I do the sequence noted, is that when the app is loaded, there are 3 Bluetooth HA connections shown in the settings screen. 2 are for the app (which never show connected) and the one that serves as the “radio” connection, which shows connected, thus easy to forget the correct one. If Bluetooth is just turned off, it can be hard to identify it when all 3 show not connected. It helps if only the device you want paired has an active search happening while attempting to pair. Under some conditions, pairing is very quick and does not need all those steps. I just find that when going from my phone with the app on it, this sequence is rock solid. Cumbersome, but mildly so. I can live with this for the quality streaming provided. As I mentioned earlier, I trialed 3 top models. The streaming audio quality was, for my ears, awesome. The others could have been improved by the Audi, but the marvels won me.

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By the way, going from the iPad to the iPhone is super easy.
Step 1: disable Bluetooth on iPad (can “forget” it prior to pairing next time)
Step 2: put iPhone in pairing mode
Step 3: power cycle HA
Step,4: connect when prompted
Takes like 30 seconds.
Sometimes the “forget” step is not necessary, but seems sure fire If done.
The device with the “app” loaded is a bit tricky because of the Bluetooth connection it maintains. If one of them is “forgotten”, the app needs to be reloaded or refreshed. Can be done within the app, but not clearly documented.

IMO, based on my use-case, it’s a much bigger deal that the Marvels don’t support multi-pairing and don’t have reliable connectivity than that they don’t support MFI. MFI is somewhat slicker, but having both an iphone and an android phone, for me, the lack of MFI was not the deal-breaker.

My Opns have support both MFI and regular bluetooth. If there is one noticeable benefit of MFI, it’s that I can have the connect clip connected to my laptop and the HAs are still connected to my iphone, so I can take a call with them without disconnecting from the laptop. The only limitation is that I have to use the iphone microphone. Not a big deal, because I can leave it on my desk, next to the connect clip and it works fine.

I gave Phonak multiple opportunities to tell me they would be fixing the single pairing issue and they declined to make any commitment. Rather, they doubled down saying how complicated bluetooth is, so I returned the Marvels. Maybe they will fix it, maybe not. I wouldn’t hold my breath or blindly hope.

How many HAs are being sold in China, India, and other third-world countries where android has the strongest market share? Not very many, I suspect.

Maybe last try :wink:
Let’s seperate facts and opinion

fact: Streaming directly into an apple phone/ipad/ipod whatever also involves interaction with apps such as user/app controls as they are enabling low-energy features. These apps are invoking deep into the IOS operating system. So in order to allow this Apple created MFI program, that contains a developer platform for anyone that want to use it. Apple controls the functionality on the app and publish it in their store.

Fact: Google create also such program, and due to the fact android is much more open (not a single vendor controls all software and hardware) it is more complicated to archieve, takes more time.

Fact: If any vendor, for example a HA vendor choose to join MFI (and not implement native BT protocol) and deep integrate BT capabilities such as BTE and other functions into the apple IOS, it can not archieve the same functions (yet) on Android, because yet there is no MFA. If they want to offer simular functions (not features that rely on energy control etc), and they do not choose to implement native BT, they need to use an intermediate device that do talk native bluetooth to the phone and proprietary wireless to the HA’s (such as Resound phoneclip)

Fact: in any vendor wants to stream directly into any(!) BT device it have to fall back on generic BT specs and thus the integration and capabilities in terms of apps etc are less.Also the energy control features, that are part of the programming code cannot be used. This is a big design issue, because native BT is very power consuming for HA’s with their small batteries (even native BT is BLE since 4.0)

Question: Now you are CEO of a HA company, what would you decide:
-implement MFI and not native BT, give users all app integration possibilities, energy control, direct streaming to the HA’s and take the disadvantage you only (yet) adress a part of the market, as Android phones do not have such deep integration (yet). As workaround you can use an intermediate device (such as Resound does with phoneclip)

-Or do not offer such deep integration and implement native BT that allows users to stream direct into all kind of BT devices however without such deep app/smartphone intergration and enhanced enery management advantage. (Phonak did, they implemented BT 4.2)

Optinion:
-so here comes my opinion: If vendor choose the first strategy, it has perspective because MFA will kick in somewhere, so this benefits to virtually whole market later
-If vendor, such as Phonak not to choose so, it’s a defendable choice, and accept the lack of deep integration, and advanced energy control but at least proper implement the correct BT software stack in order to enable features already in place for long time such as mulipoint pairing.

Maybe ideally a vendor support 3 stacks:
-MFI
-Future MFA
-Native Bluetooth

be polite and not personal in answering btw…

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How do you know? I hope that it can be fixed.

This could be interesting (haven’t tested it yet):

Because BT hardware implementation is based on generic BT chipsets. This hardware must be on their platform, because they will not have used a own reinvented bluetooth hardware platform that result in exact the same 4.2 specs. So every vendor use generic chipsets for this. The only need to develop own chipsets is for proprietary use, so other use than generic standards like BT.
For example each HA chipset for signal processing is proprietary, that makes them differ from eachother, though they functional do more and less the same… the implementation makes the difference

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Like this?

The Sonova Wireless One Radio Digital (SWORDTM) chip was originally released with Audeo B direct. With the launch of Audeo M, we’ve made updates to SWORD in order to enable multiple connectivity protocols. We have devised a smaller chip that is not only faster but also achieves more. In fact, it’s doing more than our competitors in both the hearing aid realm, as well as the commercial headphone realm. The SWORD chip will allow your patients to stream everything that they want to stream.

But one pairing at a time?!

would be interesting to hear from them why they did not enable this multipoint pairing.
energy reasons?

So my question is - if Phonak addresses pairing issue (if) will it be done in some “future HA” or will it be addressed in a firmware download for all existing Marvel HA’s? If problem could be addressed in a firmware update one would think Phonak would come out and say on such and such date/year will will upgrade HA’s and address paring issue. Marvel aids have now been out what 5, 6 months? But if the pairing issue is addressed in some future HA, then Phonak will keep quiet, play dumb and then make some announcement just before new HA comes out. Just speculation on my part but users of Marvel’s do have the right to ask questions and get straight forward answers from Phonak.

The thing is, from Phonak point of view: pairing to only one device is a feature, not a bug, so there is nothing to solve…

look at: How do I pair a second Bluetooth device to my Phonak Marvel hearing aids? | Phonak Marvel

quote:

How do I pair a second Bluetooth device to my Phonak Marvel hearing aids?

Only one device can be paired to the Phonak Marvel hearing aids at the time. To add another device you will have to remove the already paired device.

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The reason that “people are making such a fuss” about this is because it doesn’t take “one minute flat” to un-pair and re-pair on a computer, because the computer must be restarted, assuming it’s convenient to do so. Unless you’re only surfing the internet with your computer, this means that all of the documents you have open must be saved, all of the applications you are using must be closed, then you must restart the computer and re-open the applications and documents that you were using and working on before. This takes much longer than “one minute flat”. A typical day for me involves several hours in skype meetings. I can’t restart my computer while I’m in a meeting, so I have to wait to restart the computer for a time that is convenient. This is why the single pairing limitation of the Marvels was a total show-stopper.

I asked Phonak about the single pairing issue and received their excuses for why only single pairing is supported. I told them that unless they gave me assurances that they could and would address the issue, I would return the Marvels. They gave me the same useless, non-committal reply, so I returned the Marvels. Even if Phonak doesn’t feel obligated to provide straight answers to reasonable questions, consumers have recourse, which is to return the product. Apparently for Phonak, this is the only language they understand.

It is really a pity you had to decide to return. It is also understandeble as you are really hitting the point restarting pc for new connection is not a workable way to go.

Though I am happy to hear from you Phonak admit the single pairing again on phone.

I am still investigating what would be the reason not to support multipairing. I think (not sure yet) it is a combi of avoiding control issues between devices and more likely energy savings. They are really on the edge of the battery specs in my opinion with this Bluetooth trick. It costs loads of power because only one ha is actually streaming BT and the same time it transfers the signal to the other HA/ear with propietary radio (thats part of this SWORD chip).

Understand you are now on OPN’s? can you please report the differences in normal operations (while NOT streaming)