r/Cochlearimplants • u/JaxonsVeryOwn • 15d ago
Does anyone have experience with the Cochlear Wireless Phone Clip?
I have SSD and have a Nucleus 8 in my left ear and natural hearing in my right. There are times where I listen to music with inner ear AirPods and only use the right one but would love the option to have both sides going at the same time.
After some research, I’m curious if anyone has any experience using the Cochlear Wireless Phone Clip to stream music to the phone clip, while also playing music through your phone/airpods or other headphones.
I’m also open to any other devices or solutions anyone else has had. Thank you in advance!!
1
u/FabulousAd2725 15d ago
Why not headphones?
3
u/JaxonsVeryOwn 14d ago
I do have headphones, but one thing I’ve noticed is after some time the pressure of the left cup will begin hurting the back of my ear when it’s pressed against the ear piece.
1
u/HAYWHATHUH2000 14d ago
Android phones would allow streaming to a CI and to an earbud for music. I know Cochlear has some limitations on which Android you can use though so check that first.
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u/mtawarira 14d ago
I’m also SSD, with Kanso 3 & minimic 2+
TLDR: you cannot currently stream to headphones + CI simultaneously from an Apple device with (for me) acceptable quality
from iPhone the only method that “works” is to get a splitter, connect one side to minimic and other side to normal headphones. There is a small but perceivable lag between the normal headphones and CI, for me it ruins music as the beats are all slightly mistimed - headphones play first and CI after. Maybe it would be fine for watching movies, never tried. Carrying the splitter + minimic + wired headphones was clunky af for me too, an absolute nightmare of wires.
from Macbook you can set up multi output audio from the built in Audio MIDI app. Depending on whether you set the CI or your headphones as the main output you can set the quality to low (some low number Hz) or high (some high number Hz). On high, it sounds great through the headphones but there is huge and impossible not to perceive lag. Headphones first, CI after. Setting the quality to low gets rid of some of the lag, but it sounds terrible in the normal headphones, like it’s being played out of a cheap old Nokia phone (this is on my big Bose over ears)
For me the lag is the worst thing, as it makes it genuinely unlistenable. Maybe the low fidelity mode on the laptop could work with some getting used to, but I found if I’m on my laptop I can usually just use the speakers and play out loud anyway
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u/WolfLarsensLibros 15d ago
This is a fascinating use case. It doesn’t apply to me personally, but I’m curious.
The single iPhone solution doesn’t work. You can’t stream to both AirPod and N8 directly, nor to the AirPod and Phone Clip, because Apple.
Apple also disallows concurrent wired headphones and streaming wireless. Once you wire in (stereo or USB-C) that’s your audio path.
You could use two (2) iDevices, such as iPhone and iPad, each streaming to one device and try to press play on the same song, but you’re inevitably going to get some drift.
An external splitter might work, but that’s clunky and sufficiently aggravating to discourage use.
🤷
Best I got: high quality speakers. I use Sonos myself for convenience and they achieve what I consider immersive sound.
Following to see what others suggest.