Patent ID: 8145246

Claim:
A method of transmitting audio data in a listening system between an audio transmitter and an audio receiver, the listening system including a transmitting device including the audio transmitter, a receiving device including the audio receiver, and an intermediate communications device, wherein the listening system is configured to establish a first synchronous wireless link between the transmitting device and the intermediate communications device, and a second synchronous wireless link between the intermediate communications device and the receiving device, the method comprising: sampling an incoming audio signal in the audio transmitter to provide a stream of digitized audio samples; coding the stream of digitized audio samples according to an audio codec based on a sample oriented audio compression algorithm to provide a stream of coded digitized audio samples in the audio transmitter; transmitting from the audio transmitter the stream of coded digitized audio samples over the first synchronous wireless link; receiving over the second synchronous wireless link the stream of coded digitized audio samples at the receiver; decoding the stream of coded digitized audio samples according to said audio codec to a stream of digitized audio samples, wherein a coding and decoding scheme, and sampling rate used in the first synchronous wireless link between the transmitting device and the intermediate communications device are the same as in the second synchronous wireless link between the intermediate communications device and the receiving device.