LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

AHaug — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 13:49:07 GMT

Glad to hear you're having progress!

Let me know if you have any other questions and I'll make a note of them and see if I can find you an answer before Karl returns and/or relay them to him when he gets back from vacation.

Kind regards,
Andreas

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

ClinicalAudio — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 20:22:50 GMT

Thanks - I'm now following updates on the thread you posted. Good progress, now looking at repeatability (I don't always get the connection behaviour I expect) and robustness (sometimes drops)

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

AHaug — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 11:59:47 GMT

Hi,

Karl is currently on vacation for the next weeks, so I will temporarily be handling this case for him.

He left me a note stating that I should relay his latest reply in this case: RE: nRF5340 LE Audio Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro - Multiple Problems and to go from there. Just to clarify any misundersandings or if the link somehow does not show the correct reply, it is the comment starting with "I had a discussion with our primary tester of the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro..."

Kind regards,
Andreas

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

ClinicalAudio — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 10:06:33 GMT

I have audio (sort of!)!!! Very distorted and mostly silence.. but a few packets are coming through so a HUGE step forward... Thank you..

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

Karl Ylvisaker — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 10:59:35 GMT

Hello again,

[quote user="ClinicalAudio"]That's great to hear and really useful.[/quote]

I am happy to hear that! :)

[quote user="ClinicalAudio"]If you know the firmware revision on the buds you tested, we can ensure we start from the same place.[/quote]

As far as I know the firmware revision was R510XXU0AWA5, but I would not expect there to be any regression if you work with the latest possible version.

Best regards,
Karl

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

ClinicalAudio — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 15:15:31 GMT

That's great to hear and really useful. If you know the firmware revision on the buds you tested, we can ensure we start from the same place.

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

Karl Ylvisaker — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:54:35 GMT

Hello again,

A short update:
While we do not have any official list of devices that we are testing/guaranteeing interoperability with, we have run some successful tests against the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro 2, and these should work out of the box with the nRF5340 as a CIS gateway in the nRF Connect SDK v2.4 if you make sure to use 45 ms for your ACL connection interval, and change the name that the nRF gateway is scanning for advertisements from.
So, if you are looking to acquire some earbuds for testing a gateway device against you could perhaps look into if these are an option for you.

Best regards,
Karl

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

Karl Ylvisaker — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 15:49:09 GMT

Hello,

[quote user="ClinicalAudio"]I'm not sure it quite makes sense to need to tune for a particular earbud -if that is what you are suggesting.[/quote]

No, this is not what I am suggesting, but I see how my previous reply could be interpreted to mean that - apologies for any confusion I might have caused.

What I meant is that since the nRF5340 Audio DK is a development platform, not a product, you are able to configure it for the broad range of configurations that LE Audio supports. As an example, if you were to configure your nRF5340 Audio DK with the default gateway application, it would scan for devices advertising as nrf5340 audio headsets, and connect to those, so here you would have to change the scanning criteria to match whatever your specific earbuds are advertising.
Furthermore, the default gateway would assume that the headset device it connects to for instance supports both BAP and CAP for the audio delivery, which might not be the case for all earbuds on the market currently, which would necessitate a change in the configuration on your part to use whichever profiles and services the earbud offers to control them fully(since this can differ slightly between different devices just yet).

A certified LE Audio CIS gateway would indeed work against all other certified LE Audio CIS headphones, regardless of manufacturer, and without any reconfiguration necessary on either part - just as you would expect of a product with the Bluetooth / Auracast logo :)

Best regards,
Karl

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

ClinicalAudio — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 14:56:38 GMT

Thanks - it would be great if the dev team could release a tutorial or article on this topic. I think I'm one of many now wanting to switch over to LE Audio for my audio source (ie. gateway) products. Also, since a gateway will need to work with ideally all LE compliant earbuds, I'm not sure it quite makes sense to need to tune for a particular earbud -if that is what you are suggesting.

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

Karl Ylvisaker — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 13:54:43 GMT

No problem at all, I am happy to help! :)

I just heard back from the developers about this, and while we have had successful tests against third party devices we do unfortunately not maintain an updated list of these devices since they for the most part is still being actively developed.

In general, the nRF5340 Audio DK is a developing platform, which means that it is highly configurable and so when you are working as the gateway trying to talk to third-party earbuds it becomes your application's responsibility that you operate as the earbud expects. I.e it is not as 'plug and play' as when you are testing interoperability with third-party devices with the nRF5340 Audio DK in the headset role - in this case the gateway will take responsibilities of the configurations of the connection, and so the nRF5340 Audio DK headset can just 'follow along'. I am just saying this to emphasize that it requires more work to get up and running with testing of interoperability in the gateway role than in the headset role.

Regarding the specific ones you mention I recently came across a post from Earfun saying that they have disabled LE Audio support for the time being, just so you know.

Best regards,
Karl

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

ClinicalAudio — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 19:27:56 GMT

Thanks Karl, looking forward to the response from the dev team.

RE: LE audio - any success with earbuds available on the market?

Karl Ylvisaker — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 15:05:21 GMT

Hello,

Thank you for your patience with this.
I know that the developer team has done some testing against third-party devices so I have asked them for an update on their findings.

I will update you here as soon as I hear back from them.

Best regards,
Karl