In thinking about some sort of TV streamer to my HA’s, I’m a little worried that I’ll be trading the 5:1 surround sound from my Yamaha amplifier/speaker set for just stereo sound. I hear pretty well with my Quattro’s and have reasonable low-frequency hearing through my open domes. So although I’m tempted to splurge for a TV streamer of some sort (our TV is old enough it doesn’t have BT built in), I might enjoy the streaming experience less, having less bass, etc. (the Yamaha system has a subwoofer). As it is now with my HA’s, my wife complained the other night that I had the TV volume too soft! The main advantage of streaming either directly to HA’s or to BT headphones for me would be that I could listen to stuff without distracting her or awakening her if she’s asleep in the next room.
With open domes you hear the bass through your natural hearing anyway.
You could. But, the Resound TV transmitter transmits directly to the hearing aids. It does not go through the Phone clip+. It starts and stops with one press. It is very convenient.
If you have a phone clip+ and a tv transmitter, and you get a call, the tv transmitter mutes until the call is over.
That is a definite advantage. Also, I find the dialogue clearer with the tv transmitter but I do have a 5.1 system and if it is a movie that makes use of it I will sometimes go that route.
With the transmitter, you get true stereo instead of listening to two stereo speakers that are 5 feet apart, 10 feet from you. I’ve heard some really good surround sound with just stereo where left and right are isolated. Footsteps starting on the left and transitioning to the right, or my favorite, a helicopter flying right to left.
They said WITHOUT the phone clip. AFAIK you cannot do that.
My arrangement of a non-MFI transmitter at the TV and a good BT headphone also does not need a Phone Clip and is as direct as the TV transmitter - Hearing Aid combination. Of course, not wearing the HA means one cannot have telephone conversations via the iPhone and proper conversation with others in the room.
If this combination is successful (I have yet to try it) then I will use it in place of my present device:
Sony MDR-DS6500 Digital Wireless 3D Surround Headphones
which now cost about $240 - I bought a pair 5 years ago for $195. A non-MFI BT transmitter and BT headphone combination may cost around $100 depending on the models. However, BT signals will not pass through walls whereas my present Sony system allows audio to be received at any location in my apartment.
Going off topic here with Don! Not sure I’m remembering movies vis-à-vis sound effects correctly but I think the 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale (Blu-Ray version) has some great 3D sound effects, e.g., bullets zinging from behind you towards the front of screen. And, IMHO, it’s a great example of the pro case for, was it worth a remake of the classic version of the 1957 movie with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin? - my answer would be YES! Watch both and come away with kinda different feelings on the radically different outcomes.
And I think for the 2007 version ot 3:10 to Yuma, you’d definitely want the 5:1 sound, not just stereo to get the back to front, right to left across the room, sound effects. BTW, in the Quattro technical white paper on why it supposedly works so well to hear sounds in 3D, they discuss the facing up to the difficulty putting HA mics on top and behind the ear places upon spatial localization by losing the “pinna effect” and how their processing supposedly counteracts that. So perhaps if one were just listening to the modern 3:10 to Yuma with a good set of HA’s, one might fully capture the 5:1 3D sound effects from room speakers but putting on stereo headphones might negate that a bit.
My opinion is this is going to cost you more and not work as well as the Resound TV transmitter, plus, with the Resound transmitter, your hearing aids will be in, plus if you get a call on the phone clip the tv transmitter mutes until the call is over.
Looking for a thread to add comment on getting best TV sound with speech, this thread seems best due to recent posts.
Before admitting I’d best get myself HA’s, I realized in watching TV and DVD’s through optical audio output to a 6:1 Yamaha amplifier/speaker system that at least for speech that much of the speech comes out through the center front speaker and the left and right front speakers have more of the surrounding environmental “noise” in whatever is playing. So I enhanced my “speech-in-noise” understanding considerably by turning up the volume of the center speaker relative to that of the left and right front speakers. In doing something like this, you may not be enjoying the sound of the film or whatever you’re watching as the director intended but if you’re having trouble understanding speech, such a relative volume change can help a bit. Compounding the problem, I’m not sure in terms of sound/speech quality that all DVD/Blu-Ray reproductions of films are created equal in terms of sound reproduction quality and trying to squeeze everything onto a disc (we prefer Netflix DVD to Netflix on-demand streaming just because the availability of quality films to watch is so much better and we don’t want to be buying on Amazon, etc.). So the sound quality of a DVD to begin with often seems like a major hurdle to overcome (sometimes I think directors turn up the volume of other sounds in a flick when they deliberately want to minimize the impact of a stretch of crappy dialog-so you deliberately do not give the dialog too much attention!).
Noticed that this thread from awhile back: Sound bar that works like a hearing aid also has some info on getting better dialog sound of a TV.
I have tried these three Bluetooth adapters (all bought from Amazon) with a PC running Windows 7 pro to pair with a Phone clip, but without success:
TaoTronics Bluetooth Transmitter and Receiver, Digital Optical TOSLINK and 3.5mm Wireless Audio Adapter for TV/Home Stereo System - aptX Low Latency
ZEXMTE Bluetooth USB Adapter CSR 4.0 USB Dongle Bluetooth Receiver Transfer Wireless Adapter for Laptop PC Support Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP, Mouse and Keyboard, Headset
Plugable USB Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Micro Adapter (Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Raspberry Pi, Linux Compatible; Classic Bluetooth, and Stereo Headset Compatible)
However, Taotronics transmitter can pair audio players (using the headphone jack) with a bluetooth headphone (Cowin E7). The audio players I used do not have usb output port to allow me to try the two usb adapters.
I have contacted the manufacturers for advice but got no useful replies.
My query is: Does any one know an adapter or dongle that I can use on my Win 7 PC (using usb or headphone port) to successfully pair with a Phone clip+?
Thanks.
Sorry for the bold and large characters used above - I just copied and pasted from Amazon’s web page without editing.
I have had success pairing the Plugable USB 4.0 Low Energy Micro Adapter with my Phoneclip+ streamer just to listen to the sound from YouTube videos on my computer.
Two things to check out (for all these devices). Do you have the latest driver? When I first got my Plugable device in April, 2017, the driver that Win10 installed wasn’t the latest available. I got the latest driver from the Plugable website - so I’d check that out for all your devices.
Secondly, I had a lot of problems with connectivity, especially if the computer went to sleep. So if you go into Device Manager, under BT devices, find the adapter, mouse-right click, pick Properties, and see if there is a Power Management tab (there is in Windows 10 Pro). Under that tab, UNCHECK the setting “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.” After you do that, you should find the connection rock solid (if you can establish it in the first place!). Before I did that, my BT mouse, for instance, was losing its connectivity all the time when the computer went to sleep. With Win7, you may happily be set on a particular SP version but in the past with Win10, getting “major” feature updates ~every 6 months, during the major upgrade, in typical Microsoft fashion basic settings like this power management feature would be reset to what Microsoft thinks is best for you. (Same is true or used to be true for resetting your boot setup to “Fast Start” - where you’ve essentially hibernated your previous operating settings and using them again to boot rapidly-which I don’t like to do for various reasons). So if you have problems with BT connectivity down the line, check that the BT adapter power management setting hasn’t been changed back in some major MS update.
With the Plugable, I’ve found the driver gets corrupted or whatever from time to time. If I have BT connectivity problems, I go back to Device Manager, pick Update Driver, then proceed to Let Me Choose From List. Device Manager usually shows me the right repository version, and I just reinstall that. In Windows 10 I usually don’t even have to reboot.
Good Luck! Looks like from your audiogram that you need your HA’s and streaming to them for your low-frequency hearing. But since I have good low-frequency hearing and open domes, I much prefer to stream to wireless headphones and listen to the sound through both my HA’s and open domes. Don’t know if you have any wireless headphones but maybe that would be an alternative for you if you can’t get any BT dongles to pair with the PhoneClip+.
BTW, the USB adapters are apparently limited in their capabilities. My Microsoft Surface Headphones work great with all the devices I’ve tried that have BT built into the main system. But when I try to use these BT wireless headphones with my 2011 Gateway NV-59 laptop with the Plugable dongle, although I can stream sound and establish a hands-free stereo headset pairing between headphones and dongle, speak to the computer through the headphone microphones, I get a warning if I try to use Cortana through the headphones that my computer isn’t compatible with the headphones. So apparently USB-supplied BT is limited in its capabilities beyond the power management issue.
I’ve had the same experience but I think you can go back and edit and fix that up. I forget what I did, delete the end of the line of the bolded paragraph or paste the text into a new paragraph with normal size font or maybe even blockquoting (which changes the style), then “unblockquoting.”
As I mentioned my computer runs windows 7 pro, not win 10 and is quite old. I installed the driver in the cases of the two usb plugs both from the internet and the cd they sent me. In one case I even reached the stage of pairing with a S8 smartphone when a code was to be accepted but it failed as I saw on the computer screen. With the phone clip I could not even reach this stage with nothing showing up on the computer screen.
Perhaps with Windows 7 pairing with Phone clip will be a problem.
Yes, I did take note of the fact that you’re running Window 7 and mentioned it in my post. Just giving you my experience to compare and I think it was implicit in my post that you might never be able to get any of the BT dongles to work with the PhoneClip+. That’s why I suggested, in part, you might want to try wireless (or wired) headphones as an alternative (2nd to last para of my 1st reply). There are prices to be paid for trying to keep old computers working - as I know very well from trying to make a very serviceable Gateway NV-59 laptop from 2011 and a Dell XPS-1340 from 2009 keep running - they both work pretty well under Windows 10 Pro, though, but not without occasional hiccups.
Don’t know if PhoneClip+ requires BT 4.0 LE to work but there is the following line on the Plugable product page for the USB BT adapter I have (which I assume is the same as yours):
“Does not add Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth 4.0) capability to Windows 7 and earlier.”
Plugable USB 2.0 Bluetooth Adapter - Plugable (see down under FEATURES)
So that could be our Win10/Win7 difference. Maybe my Win10 supports the BT 4.0 LE with Plugable adapter, which works with Phoneclip+ but Win7 doesn’t. Maybe it’s something to check with the other adapters, too. Maybe BT 4.0 LE is required for Phoneclip+ and Win7 and earlier just doesn’t support that protocol?!
The following link says that Win8 and Win10 in general support BT 4.0 LE but Win7 does not. So may very well be your problem right there:
@akaybee Guess it’s not the lack of BT 4.0 LE support in Win7. Looking up the PC+ datasheet, it says that the PC+ supports the Bluetooth specification 2.1
https://www.resoundpro.com/~/media/REFRESH/US/00-DOWNLOADS/UNITE-ACCESSORIES/PhoneClipDataSheet.ashx?la=en-US
Sorry to mention it. I’m sure you’ve read the instructions in detail but the PC+ User Guide says to use “0000” if the pairing device requests a pin code. I vaguely remember, too, that either Win7 or Win8 recognized that not all BT devices paired with pin codes and gave you the option to bypass that requirement in your settings options. Maybe if you could turn off “use pincode” in your Win7 settings that would help?
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-disable-a-bluetooth-passkey
Sorry. Not sure if this suggestion even applies to Win7 (has been so long since I used it (2012 last time, I think).
BTW, @akaybee, forgot to mention Plugdebug. It’s a very powerful tool. Leftover Bluetooth detritus from other BT device installations, e.g., Logitech stuff, can screw you up, too. As part of making sure you have a “clean” system for the Plugable device, you can use Plugdebug. It’s amazing what you can discover that you didn’t know was still lurking on your system. You might want to give it a try.
P.S. The Plugdebug instructions also say to try the following methodology before diving into Plugdebug itself. Mentions that some devices, cites Bose QCII’s as an example, require a special approach for successful pairing on Win7. Might be worthwhile if you haven’t tried it already for the Plugable adapter and PC+:
I see Don’s subsequent post after this one but since you’ve already purchased the Plugable, et al., it might be worth trying before going out and buying something else.
I have paired and connected to several devices with a phone clip+ with no problems. For connecting to a PC, use a usb Bluetooth dongle TRANSMITTER, not a receiver. The two most bulletproof dongles I know are the Plantronics SSP2714-01 and the Sennheiser BTD500 or 800.
The Plugable BT 4.0 LE USB 2.0 adapter can function as both a transmitter and receiver. I have used it to listen to stereo audio and dictate to my PC with Dragon Naturally Speaking using both the PC+ and MS Surface Headphones for listening and the latter headphones for voice dictation. Besides different computers, etc., the main difference between akaybee and me is I’m on Win10, he’s on Win7. I take it you’re speaking for your Win7 experience.
I’ve connected to both win 7 and 10 but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen win 7.