Answered

Beam Gen 2 and hearing aids

  • 17 July 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 566 views

My wife has a Costco Kirkland signature 7.0 hearing aid.  We recently bought a Beam 2nd gen sound bar from Costco.  Older hearing aids like the 7 can have Bluetooth added on for a minimal expense, although the user has to wear an external dongle (which is definitely not ideal).

Costco has newer models that have Bluetooth included, and her current aid works great except it doesn’t have Bluetooth, and there’s not much benefit to switch if the Beam doesn’t help her.

Does the Beam 2nd gen have any Bluetooth support or support for hearing aids in general?

icon

Best answer by Stanley_4 19 July 2022, 05:16

View original

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

3 replies

My wife has a Costco Kirkland signature 7.0 hearing aid.  We recently bought a Beam 2nd gen sound bar from Costco.  Older hearing aids like the 7 can have Bluetooth added on for a minimal expense, although the user has to wear an external dongle (which is definitely not ideal).

Costco has newer models that have Bluetooth included, and her current aid works great except it doesn’t have Bluetooth, and there’s not much benefit to switch if the Beam doesn’t help her.

Does the Beam 2nd gen have any Bluetooth support or support for hearing aids in general?

No the Beam2 doesn’t have a Bluetooth transmitter - isn’t this something you would perhaps look to connect to the TV instead, as the Beam is  just receiving the audio from the TV to play on itself/surrounds. It’s not really in a position to transmit anything outside of the HT setup, hence my thoughts the hearing aid should possibly be connected to the T`V, but it maybe difficult to connect both devices (hearing aid & Sonos HT) at the same time and have all play in sync with the video playing on screen.

Most modern TV’s offer a TOSLINK audio output that you can connect to a Bluetooth transmitter. Another approach is to insert an audio extractor in the HDMI connection between the TV and BEAM. While these exist, they are very tricky to buy because HDMI and HDMI ARC are very different interfaces. This device must support HDMI ARC and it is difficult to find such a device. Plus, you would then need to add a Bluetooth transmitter,.

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

A TOS to Bluetooth transmitter works for my setup and Costco aids.

If your TV mutes the TOS output with the Beam HDMI connected then try the extractor option.

 

Look at your hearing aid specs and get a transmitter that matches or exceeds the best connection option they support.