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noise reduction and the other interesting audio algorithms that are emerging such as detecting

oncoming traffic o r relevant conversation for other applications they want to reduce latency

particularly for gaming or listening to live conversations or broadcasts theres also the never

ending quest for higher audio quality the bluetooth le audio working groups dev eloping

the specifications have had the task of coming up with new standards that support these

requirements as well as all of the topologies that are envisioned without having to rely on

noninteroperable extensions the aim is to allow the industry to move on from the position

its in today which relies on proprietary implementations to one where you can mix and match

devices from different manufacturers

the hearing aid legacy

it surprises many people to hear that a lot of this innovation was kick started by the hearing

aid industry hearing aids have needed to solve the issues of audio quality latency battery life

and broadcast transmissions for many many years they are wo rn for an average of nine

hours a day so battery life is critical during that time hearing aids are constantly amplifying

and processing ambient sound so that the wearer can hear what is happening and being said

around them they typically include mult iple microphones to allow audio processing

algorithms to recogni se and react to the local audio environment in order to filter out

distracting sound in public spaces where the facility is available they can connect to a system

called telecoil essentia lly induction loops which are used in theatres public transport and

other public areas to hear audio and provide information these are broadcast systems which

can cope with hundreds of people within the transmission area of the telecoil or allow priva te

conversations using very small loops

hearing aid users have always wanted to be able to connect to phones and other bluetooth

devices but the power consumption of traditional hfp and adp solutions was a challenge

in apple launched a proprieta ry solution based on the bluetooth low energy

specification adding an audio stream which could connect to special bluetooth le chips in

hearing aids it was licensed to hearing aid manufacturers and appreciated by consumers but

it only worked with ipho nes and was unidirectional

although welcoming the development the hearing aid industry was concerned that an apple

specific solution was not inclusive they wanted a global standard which would work with

any phone or tv and which could also replace t he ageing telecoil specification which dated

back to the s i n representatives of all of the major hearing aid companies sat down

section limitations and proprietary extensions

with bluetooth sig s board and came up with a joint agreement to provide resources to help

develop a new low powe r bluetooth standard for audio to bring interoperability to the hearing

aid ecosystem fairly soon after the development work began many consumer audio

companies started looking at the hearing aid use cases and reali sed that they were equally

applicable to the consumer market although the audio quality requirements for hearing aids

were less stringent as their users ha ve hearing loss the use cases which combined ambient

audio bluetooth audio and broadcast infrastructure were far more ad vanced than the ones

currently covered by hfp and adp they had the potential to solve many of the known

problems with the current audio specifications

as more and more companies got involved the project expanded over the eight years that

the work h as taken the bluetooth le audio initiative has evolved into the largest specification

development project that the bluetooth sig has ever done the resulting specifications cover

every layer of the bluetooth standard and consist of over pages of te xt in new and

updated documents most of which have now been adopted or are in the process of being

adopted

limitations and proprietary e xtensions

apples m ade for iphone mfi for hearing devices and asha

in apple launched its own proprietary bluetooth low energy solution for hearing aids

which it licensed to hearing aid manufacturers developed in conjunction with one of its

silicon partners it added extensions to the bluetooth le protocols to allow unidirectional

transmission of data between a phone and one or two hearing aids an app on the phone

allowed the user to select which hearing aid to connect to as well as allowing them to set

volume either independently or as a pair and to select a variety of presets which apply pre

configured setting s on the hearing aids to cope with different acoustic environments the mfi

hearing devices solution worked on iphone phones and ipad th generation devices and

subsequent products

one of the popu lar features that mfi supports is live listen which allow s the iphone or

ipad to be used as a remote microphone for hearing aid wearers this lets them place their

phone on a table to pick up and stream a conversation remote microphones are useful

accessories for hearing aids and the live listen feature provi des this without the need to buy

an additional device

early in apple announced that their mfi for hearing devices would be upgraded to allow

bidirectional audio bringing hands free capability

apples motives werent entirely altruistic accessibil ity regulations in many countries forced

them to include a telecoil in their phones which adds cost and constrains the physical design

they hoped that regulators would accept a bluetooth solution as an alternative nokia had a

similar desire and was ac tive in supporting the development of the bluetooth le audio

chapter the background and heritage

specification before they withdrew from making handsets

apple s mfi for hearing solution only works with iphone and ipads leaving android owners

with no solution in parallel with the bluetoot h le audio development google and hearing

aid manufacturer gn resound worked together to develop an open bluetooth le

specification called asha audio streaming for hearing aids which is a software solution

which works on android and above it provid es a different proprietary extension to

bluetooth le to support unidirectional streaming from any compliant android device to an

asha hearing aid

asha has provided a welcome fillin for android users in the gap before bluetooth le audio

starts to appear in phones its likely that hearing aid manufacturers who currently support

mfi for hearing aids or asha will continue to do so they will extend their support by adding

bluetooth le audio to provide the widest choice for consumers at the end of the day it is

just another protocol which means more firmware however it is likely that most new

development will move towards the globally interoperab le bluetooth le audio standard

true wireless

a practical solution to send a stereo stream to two earbuds was developed by cambridge

silicon radio around a fter they were acquired by qualcomm it was rebranded as

truewireless which is the phrase that most of the world now uses for stereo earbuds as

competitors looked at the success of apples airpods which use apples own proprietary

chipset qualcomm provided a viable alternative for every other company that wanted to

develop a competing earb ud the name true wireless stereo or tws quickly became

established and applied to almost every new product regardless of whose chip was in it

the main obstacle to using adp with separate earbuds is that it was designed for single

point topoint commun ications the bluetooth sig did provide guidance for how streams

could be sent to multi ple bl uetooth le audio sinks in a white paper titled white paper on

usage of multiple headphones back in but it avoided the question of synchronisation

assumin g that each audio sink could make up its own mind about when to render the stream

for earbuds as soon as the left and right streams move out of sync you get a very unpleasant

sensation of sound moving around inside your head the white paper approach also relie d on