5 ms·

Bluetooth will support hearing aids, sharing, and a better audio codec

37 points by DiabloD3 7y ago

ForHackernews 7y ago
> Bluetooth may really get better next year If you believe this, I've got a bridge to sell you. It basically doesn't matter what "bluetooth" the absurd, bloated standard says. What matters is what implementers do, and what they'll do is hack together the cheapest, fastest version that kinda-barely works on cheapo Chinese hardware and test it only with a couple popular Apple devices.
- ipsum2 7y ago
  Products with Bluetooth 5.0 are a lot easier to use than Bluetooth 2.0 from 10+ years back, in my opinion.
stagger87 7y ago
Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21980558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21980558
mlrtime 7y ago
hearing aids already support BT. I know people that are nearly deaf and have invisible hearing aids. They can answer the phone with BT connectivity. This is fairly recent.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  They support BT Classic, not BLE Audio which is what this is. The issue with BT Classic in hearing aids is as far as I know the same issue with most BT devices, the pairing and constant connectivity. I've found BLE to be much more forgiving. BUT, the BT SIG is a special group, we'll see how they mess this up.
prutschman 7y ago
I'm glad to see the SIG improving the baseline audio codec. SBC is/was a weird little codec. It's like a dumbed-down MPEG-1 Layer-1 audio, but with only 8 sub-bands. Like layer-1, the filterbank isn't perfect reconstruction, so the encode/decode cycle causes aliasing noise even before any quantization takes place. (At a previous job I had to make a proprietary extension that improved the stop-band attenuation of the prototype filter, otherwise the speaker companies didn't even want to talk to us, the THD+N looked so bad.) The only psychoacoustic model is an optional static biasing of which sub-bands gets bits allocated. On the other hand, you can encode/decode entirely in software on a 24 MHZ arm7tdmi. (arm7 is ARMv3, not ARMv7, confusingly).
shakna 7y ago
Fantastic. Now all those incomplete, incompatible, barely coherent and absolutely bug-ridden implementations will get better because Bluetooth will now be an even larger specification! And the specification continues to have flaws in itself! I apologise for the sarcasm. The Bluetooth situation hasn't improved over the years because the spec has. In part, yes. The spec is better. However the real difference has been large players open-sourcing parts of their bluetooth stack. However, even now, without a lot trying, you will find bugridden implementations in both hardware and software. That bluetooth works at all is a miracle.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  This is not bluetooth classic, BT as you know and hate it. It's BLE Audio. BLE is MUCH better.
  - shakna 7y ago
    I haven't had the displeasure of working much with "bluetooth classic", it's BLE that I've spent most of my time with, and I absolutely hate it every time I have to come back to it. BLE is better. But it isn't hard to be better.
    - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      Weird, I have had zero real issues with BLE. However, I'm on the device side, GATT Server, not the phone (client) side. So I have much lower access than if I was writing a Core Bluetooth app or something.
      - shakna 7y ago
        I'm in embedded world. Writing realtime drivers has been... Painful. Fixing existing realtime drivers has been worse. Almost every piece of hardware I've touched hasn't complied with the spec in some way.
paulie_a 7y ago
Bluetooth already supports hearing aids
- SamuelAdams 7y ago
  I was confused by this too. I've been wearing hearing aids all my life, and my latest pair (bought in 2014) was always able to connect to my iPhone via bluetooth. How is this new "Bluetooth LE Audio" different from what we have today? It would be nice if I could connect my hearing aids to my computer and listen to skype calls, music, youtube, etc. But so far I've only been able to connect to iOS and Android devices. Maybe this change will fix that?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mentat 7y ago
    iPhone uses a non-standard setup, probably with special hardware support for using magnetic for actual audio. There was a Defcon talk about the magnetic part, will see if I can find it.
  - shakna 7y ago
    > How is this new "Bluetooth LE Audio" different from what we have today? The new audio codec should be of a much higher quality, though it does match what some proprietary systems have already been doing. Not just "quality" improvements, but the tinny aftertones and so on should just about vanish in all circumstances. Normalisation will work better. It'll be easier to pick out voices in a crowd, etc. BLE should be much lower latency. Potentially anywhere between half and a third. Which should be a huge quality-of-life improvement for those using bluetooth hearing aids. BLE is _somewhat_ simpler, and has decent adoption throughout the software industry. So connecting to Windows, macOS, Linux should be possible. (The Linux story is complicated by the new audio codec - its nonfree and patent encumbered). If they've done their job right, you'll be able to connect your hearing aids like any other output device, with a quick and simple pair from whatever Bluetooth menu. However, BLE is also known for more frequent dropouts related to battery usage spikes. Not directly because of the spec. Because the people implementing it have done a worse job thus far. If that remains the case, then it is fairly useless as a hearing aid tool.
DenisM 7y ago
I'd settle for lower latency. Using bluetooth MIDI on my iPhone 11 Pro / Roland F-140R combo produces an occasional 1/3 second latency for some key-presses. Adding bluetooth audio on top produces 2 second latency in the music itself. So close, yet so far.
rektide 7y ago
Giant middle finger to Linux users by using a new proprietary Fraunhofer codec. We have finally gotten support for some of the other proprietary codecs in Linux Bluetooth land, then Bluetooth SIG goes & picks a new proprietary codec owned by the very very old guard. Another decade of mp3 licensing fees & stacks of legal paperwork, just to encode or decode audio. There's so many better ways this could have gone.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  Why didn’t they choose Opus?
  - makomk 7y ago
    Because there's no juicy licensing money to be made from getting Opus into the Bluetooth standard? Seriously, there's no real technical advantage to this weird proprietary codec as far as I can tell - the performance and computational complexity seem to be pretty much on a par with Opus, even based on benchmarks and hardware that the new codec was designed to do well on.
- ohazi 7y ago
  I mean, you're right. But on the other hand, this is ten years overdue, so I'll take it. Do we even have a real licensing story yet? I can see this going one of two ways... the ARM way (chipmaker pays the license fee) or the video codec way (system integrator / set-top box manufacturer / media player software vendor pays the fee). The ARM way has worked really well for ARM -- they only have to deal with a small handful of big chip companies, and there's no real way for any of them to get out of paying the fee, even in China. This being Fraunhofer, the codec way seems more likely, but it's not a particularly good business model. There are more companies for them to interact with, more chances for many of them to not pay the fee (none of the Chinese system integrators are going to pay, end users definitely aren't going to pay, etc.). Obviously everything would be easier if the BLE 5.2 chipmaker paid the fee, and then software can do whatever it wants, but I guess this is unlikely. Oh well. There'll be a usable implementation in `non-free` that everyone will use, Fraunhofer won't get their licensing fees, and it'll be too difficult / impractical for them to go after anyone.
privateSFacct 7y ago
Bluetooth using Airpods pros seems to be about 140ms latency vs speakers at about 60 ms. So a difference of 80ms. Others have differences 184ms - so more than double the latency. Could bluetooth adopt whatever apple is doing?
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
To all the sarcasic and nonsense posts here... This is not Bluetooth Classic. Your impressions (and mine) of shitty speakers that lose connection until 2am and randomly start playing something don't apply. This is BLE now with an Audio stream. It's not the same. BT and BLE share radio, and GAP profile, maybe L2CAP, everything else is entirely different. I'm not saying BT SIG didn't mess this up in special ways, but no, you don't know anything about this yet.

37 points by DiabloD3 7y ago

> Bluetooth may really get better next year If you believe this, I've got a bridge to sell you. It basically doesn't matter what "bluetooth" the absurd, bloated standard says. What matters is what implementers do, and what they'll do is hack together the cheapest, fastest version that kinda-barely works on cheapo Chinese hardware and test it only with a couple popular Apple devices.

ipsum2 7y ago
Products with Bluetooth 5.0 are a lot easier to use than Bluetooth 2.0 from 10+ years back, in my opinion.

stagger87 7y ago

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21980558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21980558

mlrtime 7y ago

hearing aids already support BT. I know people that are nearly deaf and have invisible hearing aids. They can answer the phone with BT connectivity. This is fairly recent.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
They support BT Classic, not BLE Audio which is what this is. The issue with BT Classic in hearing aids is as far as I know the same issue with most BT devices, the pairing and constant connectivity. I've found BLE to be much more forgiving. BUT, the BT SIG is a special group, we'll see how they mess this up.

prutschman 7y ago

I'm glad to see the SIG improving the baseline audio codec. SBC is/was a weird little codec. It's like a dumbed-down MPEG-1 Layer-1 audio, but with only 8 sub-bands. Like layer-1, the filterbank isn't perfect reconstruction, so the encode/decode cycle causes aliasing noise even before any quantization takes place. (At a previous job I had to make a proprietary extension that improved the stop-band attenuation of the prototype filter, otherwise the speaker companies didn't even want to talk to us, the THD+N looked so bad.) The only psychoacoustic model is an optional static biasing of which sub-bands gets bits allocated. On the other hand, you can encode/decode entirely in software on a 24 MHZ arm7tdmi. (arm7 is ARMv3, not ARMv7, confusingly).

shakna 7y ago

Fantastic. Now all those incomplete, incompatible, barely coherent and absolutely bug-ridden implementations will get better because Bluetooth will now be an even larger specification! And the specification continues to have flaws in itself! I apologise for the sarcasm. The Bluetooth situation hasn't improved over the years because the spec has. In part, yes. The spec is better. However the real difference has been large players open-sourcing parts of their bluetooth stack. However, even now, without a lot trying, you will find bugridden implementations in both hardware and software. That bluetooth works at all is a miracle.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
This is not bluetooth classic, BT as you know and hate it. It's BLE Audio. BLE is MUCH better.
- shakna 7y ago
  I haven't had the displeasure of working much with "bluetooth classic", it's BLE that I've spent most of my time with, and I absolutely hate it every time I have to come back to it. BLE is better. But it isn't hard to be better.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Weird, I have had zero real issues with BLE. However, I'm on the device side, GATT Server, not the phone (client) side. So I have much lower access than if I was writing a Core Bluetooth app or something.
    - shakna 7y ago
      I'm in embedded world. Writing realtime drivers has been... Painful. Fixing existing realtime drivers has been worse. Almost every piece of hardware I've touched hasn't complied with the spec in some way.

paulie_a 7y ago

Bluetooth already supports hearing aids

SamuelAdams 7y ago
I was confused by this too. I've been wearing hearing aids all my life, and my latest pair (bought in 2014) was always able to connect to my iPhone via bluetooth. How is this new "Bluetooth LE Audio" different from what we have today? It would be nice if I could connect my hearing aids to my computer and listen to skype calls, music, youtube, etc. But so far I've only been able to connect to iOS and Android devices. Maybe this change will fix that?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mentat 7y ago
  iPhone uses a non-standard setup, probably with special hardware support for using magnetic for actual audio. There was a Defcon talk about the magnetic part, will see if I can find it.
- shakna 7y ago
  > How is this new "Bluetooth LE Audio" different from what we have today? The new audio codec should be of a much higher quality, though it does match what some proprietary systems have already been doing. Not just "quality" improvements, but the tinny aftertones and so on should just about vanish in all circumstances. Normalisation will work better. It'll be easier to pick out voices in a crowd, etc. BLE should be much lower latency. Potentially anywhere between half and a third. Which should be a huge quality-of-life improvement for those using bluetooth hearing aids. BLE is _somewhat_ simpler, and has decent adoption throughout the software industry. So connecting to Windows, macOS, Linux should be possible. (The Linux story is complicated by the new audio codec - its nonfree and patent encumbered). If they've done their job right, you'll be able to connect your hearing aids like any other output device, with a quick and simple pair from whatever Bluetooth menu. However, BLE is also known for more frequent dropouts related to battery usage spikes. Not directly because of the spec. Because the people implementing it have done a worse job thus far. If that remains the case, then it is fairly useless as a hearing aid tool.

DenisM 7y ago

I'd settle for lower latency. Using bluetooth MIDI on my iPhone 11 Pro / Roland F-140R combo produces an occasional 1/3 second latency for some key-presses. Adding bluetooth audio on top produces 2 second latency in the music itself. So close, yet so far.

rektide 7y ago

Giant middle finger to Linux users by using a new proprietary Fraunhofer codec. We have finally gotten support for some of the other proprietary codecs in Linux Bluetooth land, then Bluetooth SIG goes & picks a new proprietary codec owned by the very very old guard. Another decade of mp3 licensing fees & stacks of legal paperwork, just to encode or decode audio. There's so many better ways this could have gone.

layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Why didn’t they choose Opus?
- makomk 7y ago
  Because there's no juicy licensing money to be made from getting Opus into the Bluetooth standard? Seriously, there's no real technical advantage to this weird proprietary codec as far as I can tell - the performance and computational complexity seem to be pretty much on a par with Opus, even based on benchmarks and hardware that the new codec was designed to do well on.
ohazi 7y ago
I mean, you're right. But on the other hand, this is ten years overdue, so I'll take it. Do we even have a real licensing story yet? I can see this going one of two ways... the ARM way (chipmaker pays the license fee) or the video codec way (system integrator / set-top box manufacturer / media player software vendor pays the fee). The ARM way has worked really well for ARM -- they only have to deal with a small handful of big chip companies, and there's no real way for any of them to get out of paying the fee, even in China. This being Fraunhofer, the codec way seems more likely, but it's not a particularly good business model. There are more companies for them to interact with, more chances for many of them to not pay the fee (none of the Chinese system integrators are going to pay, end users definitely aren't going to pay, etc.). Obviously everything would be easier if the BLE 5.2 chipmaker paid the fee, and then software can do whatever it wants, but I guess this is unlikely. Oh well. There'll be a usable implementation in `non-free` that everyone will use, Fraunhofer won't get their licensing fees, and it'll be too difficult / impractical for them to go after anyone.

privateSFacct 7y ago

Bluetooth using Airpods pros seems to be about 140ms latency vs speakers at about 60 ms. So a difference of 80ms. Others have differences 184ms - so more than double the latency. Could bluetooth adopt whatever apple is doing?

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

To all the sarcasic and nonsense posts here... This is not Bluetooth Classic. Your impressions (and mine) of shitty speakers that lose connection until 2am and randomly start playing something don't apply. This is BLE now with an Audio stream. It's not the same. BT and BLE share radio, and GAP profile, maybe L2CAP, everything else is entirely different. I'm not saying BT SIG didn't mess this up in special ways, but no, you don't know anything about this yet.