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POLL Do You Have Any Plans to Develop with Bluetooth LE Audio?

rscasny

Bluetooth LE Audio is the next evolution of Bluetooth’s audio capabilities. It has some new features such as Broadcast Audio, which we discussed in a recent Essentials.

What plans, if any do you have at your day job or in your spare time to use BLE Audio to develop a new product, build a new audio project, explore it's capabilities, etc. 

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  • 0

    I saw this neat product on the Sony website, intended for people who have trouble hearing:

    image

    It comes with a wireless charging base unit, which presumably also houses the wireless audio transmitter, and then the user can connect that base unit to their TV or Hi-Fi.

    Such a use-case needs low-latency so that it is usable with the TV image in sync, and presumably the new LE audio standard would be really ideal for such use-cases.

  • 0 in reply to shabaz

    Figured I would get it for a family member who could benefit from it. It comes with everything needed, including USB charger and its cable, 3.5mm stereo cable, and optical cable too (about 1.4m length).

    image

    There's a charging cradle with pins, not wireless charging. It doesn't actually mention if it uses Bluetooth, but I presume it does. It's not possible to open up the main unit or the cradle, without peeling bits off I think.

    image

    The other side of the unit has the IR window for operating the TV (it can be configured for Sony/Hitachi/LG/Loewe/Panasonic/Philips/Samsung/Sharp/Toshiba sets), and the battery can be remotely charged or powered if it's not desirable to use the cradle for that.

    image

    I've not tried it, but currently I've got no reason to doubt that it will work well.

  • 0 in reply to shabaz

    Looks like it has potential for upcycling down the line.

    What does 'Voice Zoom' do? EQ the vocal frequency range?

  • 0 in reply to beacon_dave

    Definitely, seems well made physically and a nice size for that. It's got three speakers inside if the marketing render on the Sony website is accurate.

     Good question, I think it's some sort of speech boost shaping as you say.

    EDIT: tried it, and there's three settings that can be cycled through: Normal, Voice Zoom 1, and Voice Zoom 2. The two zoom settings do something DSP-ish, definitely brings out some clarity to speech. 

  • 0 in reply to shabaz

    I use one of the SRS-XB12 wireless speaker pods, but the Bluetooth latency is awful so never use it in wireless mode. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as a USB compliant audio device, so mainly use it with analogue inputs. The build is good and sounds ok for its size, just let down by features.

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  • 0 in reply to beacon_dave

    I wish it was standard to have Line Input on all Bluetooth speakers. I don't have any decent portable Bluetooth speaker. I sometimes use a portable (rechargeable) conf-call speaker for that purpose (Poly Sync 20) it's surprisingly not too bad for music (relatively speaking. Way better than laptop anyway!), but there's no Line In. 

    I have a low-cost Sharp Bluetooth portable speaker with Line In for that purpose (i.e. I bought it only for the Line In. The Bluetooth was just an unwanted extra for that!).

  • 0 in reply to shabaz

    Sony appear to have replaced the XB12 with the XB13 but in doing so have now removed the analogue line in. However, even though they have added USB Type-C and the spec states USB interface under input and output terminals, it appears to be only a charging port.

    Ideally, I was after a portable speaker that also doubled up as a power bank, had a SD / USB media player and could connect via USB / analogue / Bluetooth inputs.