The sound quality is excellent for both me and anyone else watching. The other advantage of my setup is that it defaults to silence from the TV when I turn it on. I often watch TV alone downstairs. My wife watches what she wants to watch in the kitchen. If we watch something together, then she can power up the sound bar and set the volume to her liking. If I get up at 3 am (a regular occurrence these days) and turn on the TV, the room remains silent. It goes straight to my HAs.
@CaptainTrips point is the Phonak TV Connector allows you to connect directly to the optical (Toslink) output of your splitter, no need for DAC.
Only tricky point is the splitter. I used a fully passive once, and the signal was not fully stable, then switched to an active splitter (with its own power supply) and now it works fine.
1 Like
Yes, but then you don’t have remote volume control for your hearing aids – unless you use the Phonak app and your phone. Then, you hear all the beeps and boops that your phone makes, and have to deal with the annoyance of having both your phone and your Phonak streamer connected to your HAs via Bluetooth at the same time, which isn’t always reliable.
This is the sole reason that I bought the DAC. The HA’s volume control changes “ambient balance” between the HA’s microphones and the TV streamer output. Not the same as having volume control. Same with the Phonak remote. So, you would have to put up with loud commercials or soft movies, or get up and walk to the TV and push the volume controls on the Phonak streamer every time you want to adjust it. Or change the ambient balance and add more or less ambient room sound.
I use the ambient balance occasionally too. Like when my wife decided to vacuum downstairs while I’m watching TV.
If you take an analog feed from the TV and run it into the Phonak TV streamer, then you can use the TV’s remote to control your hearing HA’s volume. I did that for years. My wife controlled what she heard separately via the TOSLINKed soundbar remote. But the digital to analog conversion that happened internally in my Sony TV was poor quality, when compared with the sound quality that I get from the cheap DAC that I bought.
I was complaining to my audiologist that I was having trouble deciphering speech while streaming from the Phonak TV streamer, and it was her that suggested I switch to the TOSLINK input for the steamer. And she was right!
So, that’s my story. Just sharing it here, because it made a big difference in my satisfaction with my current HAs while streaming from the Phonak TV converter. It provides convenient and separate control over TV volume and hearing aid volume while using TOSLINK digital quality sound without having to use your phone solely to control the volume of your HAs with the Phonak app.
1 Like
Thanks a lot, makes perfect sense!
1 Like
It doesn’t make sense not to use the latest Bluetooth program in new devices, but it’s not currently necessary to have 5.3 or 6.0 to make LE Audio/Auracast work if you have 5.2.
What improvements in 5.3 do you think are necessary to make LE Audio/Auracast work that are missing in 5.2?
Sorry that’s not my point, never said it’s not gonna work, butI might ask what 5.2 has over 5.3 5.4 6.0 and all future releases, but yeah LE Audio with Auracast capability is working great for (some) people with 5.3 onwards, I haven’t heard of much about the old 5.2, I’m super hopeful that this is finally getting somewhere, it’s been sooo slow, manufacturers need to step up and get this moving, Andrew Bellavia has a few videos showing how good it can be, I’m hoping 2025 will be all in 
That makes including software sound like a trivial task.
We just went through this. We had a 4 year old Samsung TV that allows simultaneous audio with a Phonak TV Connector and the TV speaker
We just went through this same issue. We had a 4 year old Samsung TV that allowed simultaneous audio with the TV speaker and either Bluetooth or optical cable device. A month ago we got a great deal on a giant Hisense TV but sadly it could not provide simultaneous audio. We got technical help from a well informed store employee who said there are actually few models that will do this, including some higher end Samsungs, LGs and one other brand. We ended up returning the Hisense for a Samsung model that was a bit more expensive but still a good deal. We were very surprised that relatively few TV models today offer this feature.
1 Like
I have a Fire TV Omni QLED purchased about 6 months ago. I have a Bluetooth transmitter connected to it by optical cable which I pair with my hearing aids or with Soundcore ear buds. With this setup, the TV speakers are also active for my wife. I prefer to use the ear buds to simplify pairing so that my aids stay paired to my phone. This TV also has Bluetooth pairing for hearing aids (Starkey only I believe) but using this connection disables the TV speakers. I can also connect my Phonak aids by Bluetooth if I use the “other devices” option, again disabling the TV speakers. I don’t know why there is a special hearing aid connection and how this differs from a standard Bluetooth connection.
Amazon have announced dual audio on their next generation of mini led TVs for hearing aids but still with support for only some manufacturers. Dual audio meaning aids + speakers.
1 Like