A lot has changed.  After the interruption of Covid, the Edinburgh Deaf Festival https://www.creativescotland.com/news-stories/latest-news/archive/2026/07/fifth-edinburgh-deaf-festival—bigger-brighter-bolder-than-ever came into existence.  Celebrating deaf culture, language and heritage, it runs as an integral part of the Fringe.  This was its fifth year, where it had grown to 80 events.  Equally importantly, a recognition of hearing loss has become more obvious in the mainstream.  In the first week of the Fringe, Dundee Rep’s excellent show “The Singer” won a well-deserved Fringe First Award.  It was an object lesson in how to put BSL, captioning and deaf experience together on stage for every audience member.  It was a brilliant example of how to do it properly and tell an important story in a way that everyone could appreciate.

Having attended the Fringe for around 40 years, Fringe audiences seem to be ageing, which makes support for hearing loss more important.  I’m not sure whether there are any official figures on the audience demographic, but in many shows we attended, it felt that we were amongst the youngest audience members.  A number of comedians made references to taking their audience with them, with their material reflecting the challenges of retirement, not least having to care for parents who are in their nineties.  Mark Thomas illustrated the issue well when one of his hearing aids slipped out of an overly sweaty ear in the rather warm, subterranean Stand Comedy Club.  I noticed an increasing number of performers wearing hearing aids, as well as many in the audience.  Which is good, but highlights a problem for venues.

According to the RNID  https://rnid.org.uk/what-we-do/data-and-evidence/deafness-and-hearing-loss-prevalence/, around 2.4 million people in the UK have a level of hearing loss that means they would struggle to hear most conversational speech.  900,000 of those are classified as severely or profoundly deaf.  That latter category needs help in hearing what’s on stage, but the wider 2.4 million would benefit as well.  BSL is great for the 85,000 who use it as their main means of communication, but theatres need to look at ways of providing hearing assistance for everyone. 

Captioning is an obvious option, but most of what we saw was difficult to read, so audiences following the captions missed much of what was happening on stage.  I had hoped to find a few venues which might be trying out Auracast – the new Bluetooth technology which works with both hearing aids and recent earbuds.  I had high hopes for the Traverse, as they had put out a press release in June about their new Auracast system, alongside details of some of the  Fringe shows (https://aurahear.com/2026/06/were-excited-auracast-comes-to-edinburghs-traverse-theatre/.  Sadly, on the five occasion we saw plays there, I found no sign of any Auracast transmission.  There was no signage suggesting it was working (nor was there any for their telecoil system) and none of the front of house staff knew anything about it.  I understand the excitement of getting press releases out, but for accessibility issues, they do need to reflect reality, and the theatre staff need to be trained to support anyone requiring help.

The Traverse also exhibited some unwelcome aspects of sound design, which didn’t enhance hearing for anyone.  In their headline show “After Party” the actors were miked, which led to some very strange effects.  At one point two characters were talking together at the front left of stage.  One voice came from a speaker close to them; the other from a speaker at the top right of stage, inserting a good 10 metre separation into what should have been an intimate conversation.  There were equally bizarre effects throughout “Badgers” in the smaller Traverse 2 studio space, where the sound source jumped back and forth between the actress and speakers.  I got the feeling that directors and sound designers are being blinded by technology and not listening to what the audience is hearing.  Sound should enhance a performance, not degrade it. That was definitely not the case with some of the Traverse shows.

A few venues also suffered from over-enthusiastic (or just incompetent) sound technicians who ramped up the volume of pre-show music to a level that made conversation impossible.  One show at the Gilded Balloon forced us to get out earplugs while waiting for the show to start.  Given that the perceived wisdom at the Fringe is that ticket sales depend on word of mouth recommendations, preventing conversation with people you’re sitting next to seems particularly self-destructive to the show’s revenue, as well as the audience’s hearing.  I know that the Fringe is a major technical challenge with sound engineers trying to run far too many shows.  That has always been a problem, but a growing number seem to have little idea of what they’re doing.

In terms of hearing accessibility, I’d hoped for a bit more this year, especially given the Traverse’s press release about Auracast.  On the plus side, the content of what was on stage raised the profile of hearing, and “The Singer” was a superb demonstration of how to do it properly.  I’m hoping that next year, with more understanding of Auracast and support for it in more hearing aids and earbuds, the experience will be far more solid.

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Within manufacturing circles it has become a constant complaint that the cost of UK energy is crippling industry, with Ed Miliband’s NetZero policies placing an almost impossible burden on companies trying to compete internationally.  Whether he will supplant Maggie as the chief architect of UK manufacturing decline is something only time will tell, but there was a collective sigh of relief when he was exiled to the Foreign Office.  So, what do these new announcements mean for UK manufacturing and technology?

The plan to encourage youngsters to take a more practical route to a career is very welcome.  Part of it had already been signalled by the recent consultation on the future of vocational V-Levels.  Burnham’s new rhetoric sounds positive, writing that “in the age of AI, practical and technical skills haven’t become less valuable – they’ve become more valuable than ever. Britain will need brilliant engineers, electricians and cybersecurity experts more than ever before.  For the first time, technical education will be at the heart of our curriculum, not bolted onto the sides.”  He added that “for too long, students had been told to take academic subjects and that a technical education should be valued as much as a university degree”.  For those of us who have been promoting STEM for years, that’s music to the ears. 

What’s slightly worrying is that the rationale for this change of policy doesn’t seem to be about strengthening UK manufacturing, but a hope that it might be a lever to reduce the growing number of young school leavers who are Not in Employment, Education or Training, otherwise known as NEETs.  The cost of supporting that growing number is becoming a worry for the Treasury, who need to cut the associated welfare bill.  Andy Burnham has said he’s “on a mission” to reduce the number of NEETs, which is something that I’m sure everyone would support,  But preparing them for manufacturing jobs is only a viable strategy if the conditions are in place to expand manufacturing.  That means reducing energy prices and the cost of employing staff.  Without those changes, it’s eerily reminiscent of Maggie Thatcher’s use of youth training schemes to massage the employment statistics back in the 1980s.  Good for political PR, but no help for UK industry.

Sadly, Andy Burnham’s view that a technical education should be valued as much as an academic one doesn’t seem to apply to his choice of cabinet ministers.  After they were appointed, the Higher Education Policy Institute looked at their first degrees:

Only one minister – the Education Secretary, Lucy Powell, has a first degree in a science subject, although she never pursued that career, going straight into political campaigning.  These numbers show that over half of the cabinet studied politics in some form.  Most of the cabinet ministersm have never had what the majority of people would consider to be a real job.  A similar lack of real world experience applies to most of the rest, although both Angela Rayner and Annaliese Midgely have the benefit of getting out and doing stuff rather than going to university.  Something which Burnham’s new initiative should encourage.

When you stop to think about it, the overabundance of cabinet members who studied politics makes little sense.  These are all people, who at sixteen or seventeen years old, decided (or were encouraged) to do a politics degree.  At that point they had minimal real-world experience, but set foot on the politics treadmill and have never got off.  While the rest of us have been out working and learning about real life, they’ve been climbing the slippery poles of local politics and Westminster, living inside a self-reflecting bubble.  Most are well intentioned, but it’s a selection process which seems to be designed to produce the people least competent to govern.  It almost impossible to argue that this is the best way to select members of Parliament, as recent experience has proven.  But that’s me applying an evidence-based analysis that most of them would not recognise.

I use evidence-base advisedly, as that’s the foundation of what you learn in STEM subjects, but which is so often missing in politics.  We need our ministers to evaluate decisions by thinking about consequences and risk, and not just making knee-jerk reactions.  That lack of risk analysis has been apparent across all parties for most of the last two decades.  It’s a skill which needs to be learnt.  Without it, we see the same mistakes being made again and again.  It’s why our energy prices are the highest in Europe, killing our industrial competitiveness.  It’s why HS2 has been so wasteful.  It’s why we are seeing the same thing happen with the Lower Thames Crossing.  It’s why we need real world experience in Parliament.

In terms of the failure to understand risk, there’s no worse example than Teresa May’s NetZero bill.  Few people remember that it was kicked off by Labour’s Rachel Reeves, who, as chair of the BEIS committee, pressed for a net zero emissions bill.  She strongly supported a target without questioning its cost to the nation.  With Ed Miliband’s subsequent help, that duo have dealt a death blow to UK manufacturing.  That’s apparent in the World Bank’s figures on UK manufacturing as a percentage of GDP.

After the decline of the nineties and early 2000s, UK manufacturing began to grow.  But as the subsidies loaded onto energy prices started to bite, it faltered and fell.  Covid hit it further, but it managed to bounce back, until even higher energy prices and Rachel Reeves’ increased taxation on employment caused it to plummet. 

When the NetZero bill came before Parliament, MPs should have asked pertinent questions.  Hardly any did, failing to understand the consequences.  The main dissenting voices in the debate came from the two backbenchers – Labour’s Graham Stringer and Conservative Kemi Badenoch, both of whom questioned its effect on energy costs, industrial impacts, and practical estimates for infrastructure and workforce requirements.  Stringer and Badenoch seem an unlikely pair, but they have something in common.  They both have a science background and have had real jobs in industry.  That’s an unusual background in British politics.

There is no question that we need to address NetZero, as does every other country in the world.  However, no other country has adopted the approach of Miliband and Reeves, which is currently destroying our manufacturing base.  We need to expand our capabilities to make the products that will help mitigate and reverse climate change.  Most in the manufacturing industry consider the Miliband and Reeves policy as tantamount to national treason.

If we consider why no other country made the same mistake, one answer may be the background of their MPs.  After the last election I did a count of how many MPs had real experience of working in science and technology.  The House of Commons claimed it had risen to 110, but that relied on counting subjects like “Economic Science”.  Economics is not a science, nor are many of the other degrees that the Commons selected to try and tick the STEM box.  If you narrow it down to those who had got their hands dirty, I reckoned that it was 21, representing just 3.2% of our MPs.  Elsewhere in Europe, that percentage is closer to 10%.  That may well be the reason they aren’t killing their manufacturing bases. 

This lack of science and technology experience is worrying.  Like it or not, our lives depend on it, and we need policies to ensure that the UK is good at it, rather than the Reeves / Miliband approach of policies which constrict it.  As the geo-political climate becomes more turbulent, the UK needs to be able to ensure security and living standards.  Technical sovereignty is not just subsidising a steel plant; it’s understanding the supply chain of everything we use.  We can’t make everything ourselves, but we need to ensure we have access to what we need, and to leverage our position to maintain access to the rest.  That means identifying and supporting the expertise that makes the UK important to others within each technology chain.  I suspect few of the cabinet could sustain a conversation on those topics for more than a few minutes.

Having said which, Andy Burnham’s plans are a good step forward, but they’re a tiny one, and we need many more of them.  We also need to make sure that our MPs understand the goal is to grow Britain’s technical independence and not just massage the number of NEETs, all of whom deserve jobs when they’ve finished their training.  Andy Burnham talks of his father’s long-term career in manufacturing as a key influence in his upbringing and work ethic.  We need to bring that back for a new generation.  UK manufacturing will be different in the future, but I am convinced it can be successful.  We need to convince our politicians that they correct their mistakes and concentrate on manufacturing’s future.

As a footnote to anyone who thinks I’m overegging the difficulty of manufacturing, let me ask you a question – “Could you make a pencil?”  And “could you make a factory to make a million of them?”  Whatever your answer, go and download and read Leonard Read’s short essay “I, Pencil”.  It was published in 1958 and remains one of the best descriptions of how the simplest thing contains complexity.  It opens people’s eyes to what lies behind the everyday and advocates establishing an environment that lets creativity flourish.  I would encourage everyone, and especially everyone in Parliament, to read it.

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Looking at the spectators sitting in the main courts, it looks as if they’re aging, possibly because you need a hefty Civil Service defined-benefits pension to afford the tickets.  Which mean that a fair number will have hearing loss.  According to Wimbledon’s Access Guides, there are Hearing Loops located at key points around the grounds, but it doesn’t mention if they’re in the courts.  Even if they are. reinforcing sound for a tennis audience poses some interesting questions.

Most of the time when you’re listening to live entertainment, what’s going on, along with its associated sound is in front of you.  Sport stadia add an extra complexity, as most spectators sit on one of the long sides of the stadium.  So, as far as the sound is concerned, one half of the spectators hear the mirror image that the other half hears.  Which means that when Djokovic serves, one half hears the thwack and grunt on their left, while the other half hears it on their right.  For an event like Wimbledon, that gives the accessibility crew a problem – what do they feed into the sound feed for the best accessibility experience?

For a hearing loop, it’s an easy answer, as the loop will almost certainly only support mono.  Listeners can hear the amplified sound from the court, but they’ll be back in a pre-1957 mono era, before stereo became a commercial reality.  Seventy years later, ignoring any subsequent progress in audio technology isn’t demonstrating much progress. 

But it doesn’t need to be constrained.  When we were designing the new Bluetooth LE Audio standards, the problem of tennis courts came up.  We realised that with separate left and right earbuds or hearing aids, it would be trivial to flip the sound around, so that listeners could choose which way round they wanted to hear the audio.

In the case of a tennis match, the key input would be the sounds from the court, probably captured with respect to the umpire at the net, including their pronouncements of the score and match progress.  That would be fed to an Auracast transmitter as a stereo feed, and spectators could select which channel corresponded to their left and right, based on where they were sitting.  Spectators at either end could mix the two channels to provide mono, with the option to change the balance, so that the end nearer to them sounded closer.

What we didn’t anticipate was the lack of imagination of product designers.  Almost everyone working in audio design today has spent their life designing with the constraints of a one-to-one link, where sound isn’t shared or manipulated.  We’re just seeing the start of spatial audio, but it’s very much the exception, not the rule.  Instead of getting excited by the new possibilities, most developers are desperately tying to ignore them, shoe-horning their new products into the same old shoeboxes.

Which is a shame, as we can now do so much more with audio.  The new Auracast capabilities, which are coming to earbuds, hearing aids and speakers will transform the way we use sound, both for voice and music.  Events like Wimbledon should be used as an opportunity to experiment and showcase the opportunities.  We’ve seen theatres and public venues embrace Auracast, but sport seems to be dragging its heels.  Whoever may win at Wimbledon this year, let’s hope Auracast gets seeded next year.

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There’s a consultation on whether that’s a good idea at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/plug-in-solar, but in typical DESNZ fashion, it opened last week and closes next week.   So if you’ve got an opinion, you have until 30^th June to respond.

The principle of plug-in solar is simple.  You get a package which contains a solar panel, and an inverter – an electronic box which converts the low voltage, DC output of the solar panel into an AC mains supply. The inverter has a normal 13A mains plug on it, but when you plug it into one of your sockets it doesn’t take power out, it pushes the solar power into your home mains supply.  That’s power you don’t need to pay for, which reduces your electricity bill.  It’s as simple as that.  Plug-in solar units are already popular in countries like Germany, where people install them on balconies and shed rooves, but so far, they’ve not been legal to install in the UK.

A typical system looks like this:

When the sun shines on the solar panel, 230V mains appears on the plug.  That’s what’s worrying DESNZ.  If you were to touch it, you’d get an electric shock, which is obviously a bad thing.  To prevent this happening, the inverter needs to include something called anti-islanding protection.  (Despite the name, this has nothing to do with Brexit.)  It’s a way of sensing when a local electricity microgenerator is operating in isolation.  Although you may not consider it, your plug-in solar panel and inverter is actually your own personal micro power station.  If the anti-islanding circuitry doesn’t detect that a mains voltage is already present on the 13A plug, either from the grid or any other solar panels you might have, it isolates the 13A plug from the inverter in around 50 milliseconds.  Even if you got a shock, that’s not long enough to do you any harm.

There’s a lot of other things that the inverter needs to do, such as tracking and synchronising to the mains voltage and frequency.  This means that inverters for plug-in solar need to be quite sophisticated designs.  However, issues with making them work reliably have been ironed out over the past few years in the German deployments, so there’s no real reason why well designed systems shouldn’t go on sale in the UK.  Any extra power you generate beyond your own usage will find its way to the grid, unless you also install a battery.   It’s debatable whether you’ll be paid for that electricity, as to do so would probably mean you’d need to get your meter changed.  As these plug-in solar units are being limited to 800W, your utility probably isn’t interested in doing that.  But plug-in solar should still save you money and pay back over 4 – 5 years.

That’s the theory.  To test that premise, DESNZ commissioned a company called Arceio to look at current plug-in solar packages and assessed how well they worked.  That’s been published at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a32bfea0bea238415c9a1c0/Plug-in-solar-PV-study.pdf and forms the evidence behind the consultation.

It’s a thorough study, but there’s quite a big “BUT” about it.  In the UK, we have a bit of a penchant for regulations.  Where wiring is concerned, you’re not allowed to make any modification  without notifying your local council’s building control before you start, or employing a registered electrician.  There are building control regulations ,along with the IET’s wiring regulations which you’re meant to read and have to follow, even if you’re only replacing a socket.  That’s the theory and DESNZ and the IET seem to believe it’s how things work.  If you’ve ever walked into a B&Q or Screwfix you’ll know that you can buy almost any electrical product and take it home to install yourself.  I assume that millions of people do, which makes quite a nonsense of any notification procedure. 

This report ignores that reality and recommends that plug-in solar should be a notifiable device.  In other words, if you buy one, the retailer has to tell the appropriate Government body, who can potentially check you’ve done it properly or that you’re “competent”.  It’s the same principle that used to be applied to TVs.  Every shop that sold a TV had to tell the TV licensing authority the address of the purchaser.  They would then check if you had a TV licence and if not, they’d send around a TV detector van to see if it was working, after which they’d take you to court.  Whether Ed Miliband is planning a fleet of electric PV detector vans is something we’re not told.  As he can’t drive, at least he won’t be out chasing offenders himself.

What is more worrying, and something that say a lot about the people who did the testing, is that it is all viewed through the lens of wiring regulations.  There’s virtually no mention of security.  As that’s what the “S” in DESNZ stands for, that’s quite an omission.  All of the microinverters that were tested come with an associated phone app, which presumably uses a Wi-Fi connection.  That means they can potentially be hacked.  If their firmware is changed, the anti-islanding function could be disabled, changing them from a money saving product to a life-threatening product. 

Penetration testing, which measures a device’s susceptibility to hacking, should have been a key feature of the test, but it’s not.  The report confines itself to the electrics and whether they’ll withstand typical British weather.  It feels that it’s an exercise in applying IET wiring regulations, with no notion that the world has moved on.  It’s not the first time we’ve seen this happen.  In DESNZ’s former life as DECC, they made the same mistake with smart meters, which meant that the first million or so meters had to be replaced with secure ones after a GCHQ review found the inadequate.

It also skates over the real things that we should worry about with plug-in solar, which are the everyday ones.  Will they be mounted properly?  They are far more likely to kill someone by falling from a fifth floor balcony, where they’ve been tied on with a piece of string, than by electrocuting someone.  Will people be able to modify them, as we’ve seen happen with electric scooters and bikes, and will we be able to prevent the sale of non-compliant devices.  Those are already available to purchase from web retailers.  Fixating on wiring regulations and the arcane considerations of technical guilds won’t help us save money on energy, or get to net zero.  Germany has shown that plug-in solar can work.  What the UK needs is to see them on sale in LIDL and Screwfix.  Which is what we should be telling DESNZ.

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The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is  a parable of Hitler’s rise to power, conceived as a parallel story based on Chicago gangsters fighting for control of the vegetable trade.  It’s an important piece, not least because of the warning of its final line “The beast that bore him is in heat again”.  But enough of UI for the moment.  Here’s what I learnt about User Interfaces for hearing aids.

Just before the performance started, I became aware of a conversation behind me, where a man was complaining to his partner about the difficulty of using his assistive listening device to tune in to the correct audio stream for the performance.  The theatre at Stratford has put a lot of effort into assistive support, with both telecoil inductive loops and assistive audio headsets which patrons can borrow during a performance.  That makes sense, as it has one of the older audience demographics.  Every time I venture up to Stratford, I feel that I’m in the youngest quartile of the audience (and I’m in my seventies).  Based on the general statistics for hearing loss, that means that there are probably at least 150 audience members at each show who would benefit from some kind of hearing reinforcement.  Which is presumably why the theatre is equipped with a telecoil system.  Except, when you walk in to the auditorium, you see:

There was a sign telling hearing loop users that the theatre’s telecoil system had been turned off.  The reason is that the production uses electric guitars, and apparently their pickups are affected by the audio from the telecoil’s inductive loop.  Who knew?  This is presumably a particular problem in any auditorium with a thrust stage, which would be most theatres that have tried to reproduce a Shakespearean setting.  In Shakespeare’s day, audiences wouldn’t generally have lived long enough to develop hearing loss.  And certainly not long enough to have the chance to experience an electric guitar.  But those messages don’t seem to have got through to modern theatre designers.

The RSC do offer alternative audio enhancement headsets, which is what the gentleman behind me appeared to be struggling with, but I wondered how many of them they had available.  I suspect it was probably fewer than the number of audience members wearing hearing aids.  What’s more interesting would be knowing when the director was told that if he wanted electric guitars it would prevent hearing aid wearers using the building’s telecoil?  Was that pointed out at the start, or was a sticking plaster applied at the end?

As the lights went down, another issue presented itself.  The gentlemen to my right, who was presumably wearing hearing aids or earbuds obviously wanted to adjust the volume, but needed to do it using the app on his phone.  While his wife frantically whispered to him to turn the display off, or put it away, you could feel others around him tensing and inwardly demonising anyone who turned on their phone screen during a performance.

In both cases, you can’t blame the user.  Neither should have been put in this position, and were only there because nobody thought through the user experience.  I’ve worked on wireless specifications for many years, and most of the time they’re predominantly written by protocol engineers – low-level hardware programmers who don’t generally have direct experience of the way that products are likely to be used.  That’s why we have these issues.  I’ve been heavily involved with Auracast – the new Bluetooth audio standard which is designed for hearing reinforcement and audio sharing.  Although I don’t wear a hearing aid, I carry around a small telecoil headset to see how often inductive loops work, and it’s not been an edifying experience.  Often, they don’t.  My hope is that Auracast, which will work with both consumer earbuds and headsets, as well as hearing aids, will provide an easier experience, but many more segments of industry need to talk to each other if it’s is going to become a really seamless experience.

The final piece of learning came at the end of the interval.  The cast of gangsters, led by Arturo Ui ,were roaming round the audience trying to “persuade” people to sign up to their protection racket.  They’d obviously worked out likely situations to let them pounce on victims, one of which was to look out for anyone using a mobile phone just before the start of the second Act.  Mark Gatiss, who was giving an incredibly impressive and menacing performance as Arturo Ui, crept up on the man behind me, who was setting up his assisted listening device, presumably thinking it was a mobile phone.  As his Arturo Ui persona launched into a spiel about the evils of using mobile phones in a theatre he was rebutted with a firm “that’s my hearing aid”, followed by an ongoing commentary berating the fact that it didn’t seem to work.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actor involved with a piece of audience participation slink away so quickly, as Mark Gatiss recognised the impending rabbit hole of getting trapped in in technical support.  In this instance, being Ui trumped the prospect of UI explanations.

It was fascinating to see these little incidents, as they highlighted how much more needs to be done to make hearing assistance seamless.  The evening illustrated a succession of little problems that cause unnecessary frustration because designers, whether of products, apps or service infrastructure, haven’t thought things through properly.  None of the problems were insoluble, or even particularly difficult to fix, but there are still design and societal issues that need to be taken into account.

As for the show, it is a brilliant production.  With luck, it will transfer and be more widely seen.  One other positive is that this was the first time that I’ve seen an actor on stage wearing hearing aids, other than in a part that specifically required them.  I’d not thought about just how rare it is to see anyone wearing them on stage or screen, where they should be as common as glasses.  Sadly, they’re not.  It ended up being a very enjoyable evening, providing so much more to think about beyond the very important political message of the play.

The post Arturo Ui, Electric Guitars and Hearing Aids appeared first on Creative Connectivity.

Ever since phones started supporting audio, there’s been a challenge for phone manufacturers about who would be responsible for the overall audio experience.  At the start, phones would ship with relatively cheap wired earbuds – a model that Sony invented with the Walkman, but consumers quickly became dissatisfied with the quality of these buds.  As phones almost all had 3.5mm audio jacks (and the few who didn’t quickly changed to include them), users could buy any brand of headset to use with their phone.  It was a boon for existing headphone manufacturers like Bose, Sony and AKG, as well as an opportunity for new entrants like Beats, who built brands on the lifestyle opportunity that arrived a few years later with music streaming.

Phone manufacturers, aware that they were losing a market opportunity to headset companies, responded by developing or acquiring their own offerings.  Samsung bought Harman (AKG), Apple bought Beats, whilst LG licensed technology from Bang & Olufsen

The next step in audio development came with Apple’s removal of the 3.5mm audio jack.  That wasn’t driven by any audio consideration, but by mechanical and economic ones.  The jack socket took up a relatively large amount of space inside a very crowded phone.  It was difficult to make it waterproof and it cost money, albeit only a few cents.  But saving a few cents on each phone is significant when you’re making hundreds of millions of them.   However, before they could remove the jack, Apple needed earbuds which would work using their existing Bluetooth chip,  They met that challenge brilliantly with the introduction of their AirPods, which became the most successful consumer electronic product ever, achieving sales of over 100 million units in just three years.  Counterpoint Research have calculated that since their launch, AirPods have contributed a cumulative revenue of $100 billion for Apple, making them Apple’s third most important product line behind iPhones and Macs.

Cumulative revenue from AirPod sales – Counterpoint Research

Apple’s AirPods weren’t the first Bluetooth wireless earbuds, but they set the standard for engineering and audio quality.  Apple designed them to integrate seamlessly with the IoS software in the phone, providing a compelling user experience.  More recently, they’ve extended the AirPod brand to over-the-ear headphones, competing with Beats, which they acquired in 2014. 

To Apple’s surprise, AirPods were a hit with owners of Android phones.  (The only other time Apple had done that was when they released iTunes for Windows which, according to the excellent book “Apple in China”, went against Steve Jobs’ intentions).  The user experience of AirPods on Android wasn’t quite as slick as it was for iPhone owners, but it was still more impressive than the earbuds made by other manufacturers. In a stroke, Apple had defined how audio should be done, and become the market leader.

AirPods provided a textbook example of how to build an experience that delights by owning the whole ecosystem.  But the inherent interoperability built into the Bluetooth specifications meant that others could benefit as well.

While competitors concentrated on catching up with AirPods, something else was happening behind the scenes.  Engineers from across the industry (including Apple) were working on a new Bluetooth standard that included a feature called Auracast.  Auracast allows users to share audio.  It means that you can share the music stream on your phone with your friends.  If you have Auracast in your TV, you can all listen to it silently without waking the kids or annoying the neighbours.  Auracast users can each change their volume individually, so there’s no longer a fight for the volume control, and it can be picked up by hearing aids, letting people with and without hearing loss get the optimum listening experience. 

As with all new technical innovations, it takes some time to get critical mass in the market.  The first Auracast products were hearing aids, followed by small transmitters which could be fitted to TVs, mainly aimed at people with hearing loss.  These have been enthusiastically taken up by theatres, community centres and places of worship, who see them as a low cost way of helping their audiences.  As the number of these Auracast broadcast transmitters have increased, Auracast has also started appearing in consumer earbuds, with models available from Sony, Samsung, LG, Technics and Sennheiser.  There are also some very impressive ones from new entrants who think they can take sales away from Apple.  A good example is Earfun’s 4+, which retail at around $60.

Designing an Auracast earbud or headset is relatively easy.  An Auracast earbud will receive all of the same Bluetooth audio streams that every other earbud does, and add the capability to find and render an Auracast broadcast stream.  It only needs to receive and render one audio stream at a time, so it’s a fairly simple design evolution.

For phone and PC manufacturers it becomes a lot more complicated.  Although users rarely think about it, your phone or PC may be connected to many different Bluetooth devices at the same time.  While you’re listening to your music on your earbuds, you may be using your watch to change the volume or select the next track you want to play.  Your phone may also be talking to a fitness ring, or taking data from a glucose monitor.  An app may be using Bluetooth to open your door, or setting up your pet feeder.  Managing all of these concurrent Bluetooth operations at the same time is a very complex task.  For a phone manufacturer, or more specifically, a company developing the underlying phone operating system, which means Apple with their IoS, or Google with Android, they also need to work out how to support the functionality of the Auracast broadcasts, as the same time as managing all of the other Bluetooth connections.  Because Auracast has a very low delay between sound coming in and being rendered in your ear, there are some very complex priorities and scheduling to ensure everything works together and to prevent any glitches in the audio.  That’s really hard.

When Auracast was announced, most of the industry thought that mobile phones would determine when it would reach critical mass.  Throughout Bluetooth’s history, phone support was the gate for each new feature to take off.  But this time it would be different, as some of the people working on Auracast realised that there was a parallel opportunity in TVs.  Adding broadcast to a TV allows everyone to watch at the volume they want, which is especially important if some of the audience  are wearing hearing aids.  In the future, Auracast will also enable advanced features like multiple language streams for the same programme.  They also see it as a key competitive edge for a year when they expect bumper sales, as people buy new TVs to watch the world cup. 

For a TV manufacturers, adding Auracast to their TV is a lot simpler than it is for a phone manufacturer to add Auracast to a phone.  TVs don’t have the complexity of connections that a phone has – adding Auracast just needs then to slot in a new Bluetooth audio stream.  Which is exactly what they’re doing.  Samsung, LG, Panasonic and Philips have all announced that their latest TVs include Auracast, which means that by the end of 2026, almost 150 million people will have access to Auracast in their homes and will want earbuds and headphone which support it.  That’s a great opportunity for any headset or earbud manufacturer who supports Auracast, which is almost all of them except Apple.

If Auracast adoption had been left to the phone operating system manufacturers, they would be in charge of the point where it reached critical mass.  Google is currently ahead, with support first appearing in their Version 14 stack, which runs in the Pixel 9 and above, but they don’t yet have many compelling Auracast apps.  Samsung are also supporting Auracast in their new handsets.  Apple have announced that they are “very excited” about Auracast, but there’s no mention of a timescale for products.  What neither appear to have expected is the enthusiasm for Auracast shown by the TV industry, 

That’s why Apple has a dilemma.  Current AirPods with their H2 chip are almost certainly capable of supporting Auracast, but Apple won’t realistically turn the functionality on until their iPhone software supports it, because that would mean that AirPods would work “better” with Android phones than they would with iPhones.  However, as more and more consumers are exposed to Auracast from their new TV, they’re going to stop buying AirPods and start buying competing products.  They can choose from a growing range from low cost, but very competent units like Earfun to top end models from Technics and Sennheiser. 

I have immense admiration for Apple’s AirPods.  Designing that small a product with that level of performance is an engineering miracle.  It is quite deservedly the fastest selling consumer electronics product ever and has almost certainly been an amazing cash cow for Apple.  But the longer it takes for Apple to enable the Auracast capabilities in their AirPods, the more they will lose market share.  By the end of the year, the overall brand share could look like this:

Once you lose customers, it’s difficult to get them back, so you don’t want to discourage them.  I suspect that’s the reason the AirPod Max 2s had such a low key launch.  Apple knows that the lack of Auracast is the elephant in the room and would like to put off that conversation for as long as possible.

Whether to turn on Auracast support in the AirPod range is almost certainly not at the top of the list of things for John Ternus to do when he takes over from Tim Cook in September, but it’s an important decision.  If Apple turns on Auracast support in AirPods, it’s an acknowledgment that control of their ecosystem does not ultimately trump market leadership.  If they wait for iPhone support, then it may be a sign that Apple is heading back to the more traditional view of a company that demands customer loyalty and is closing up its ecosystem.  The dilemma is that the longer it takes Apple to turn Auracast support on in its products, the more likely it is that they’ll have to explain a sales chart that looks like this:

That’s not a good prospect for what has just been identified as your third most important product line.

Whatever John Ternus’ decision, this is going to be a fascinating year for audio, as TV manufacturers take the initiative and potentially push Apple out of their dominant position in earbuds.  I’m looking forward to seeing how it pans out and how Apple decides it wants to play its hand.

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Introducing Auracast

Auracast is a new Bluetooth technology that lets you stream audio to multiple different headsets or speakers.  It’s designed for situations where people want to share audio, whether that’s personal music or public audio.  Its development was started by the hearing aid industry to make it easier to stream voice and music to hearing aids, based on their experience with telecoil hearing loops.  However, the ultimate aim was for it to transform all sorts of consumer applications with a new generation of earbuds, speakers and headphones.  It’s really fast, so there’s no noticeable delay when you’re watching a film or video, it’s lower power, much easier to control and it’s longer range.  But it’s taken some time to get here.  However, 2026 looks as if it will be the tipping point, when it moves into the mainstream.

Why does wireless technology take so long to become available?

The problem with wireless technologies is that they need two ends – two different products. both of which can communicate with the same wireless standard.  That complicates things, because they need to work with each other – something that the industry calls interoperability.  There are lots of great inventions which don’t need any interoperability.  Simple inventions like selfie sticks and air fryers just need to be built and sold, as they work by themselves.

With wireless products, the new user experience needs different companies, often from different industries to work together, which is not the way most companies traditionally do things.  They generally like to do their own thing, so have to learn a new way of working together.  It also generates a chicken and egg situation where there needs to be enough of one side available for the other to be worth buying.  That happened when mobile phones arrived,  Not many people bought one until there were enough base stations to get a signal.  Once coverage spread across a country, sales of phones rocketed.  The same thing happened with Bluetooth; chips started appearing in phones in 2001, but hardly anyone used them until there was enough critical mass to persuade headset manufacturers and the automotive industry to provide the other end of the connection.  Wi-Fi chips started getting into laptops even earlier, but for years, there were no access points to connect them to.  It’s always comes back to that same chicken and egg situation, where one side needs to attain critical mass before the market can take off.

Over the past few years, the first Auracast products have been appearing on the market, but nobody was quite sure where the critical mass would come from.  Most of the industry thought it would happen in smartphones, but instead, it’s coming from an unexpected sector – TVs.

How TVs came to lead the way

The TV industry isn’t normally associated with audio innovation.  In general, they rely on other companies to make soundbars and speakers for anyone who wants better or louder audio, but with Auracast they’ve seen the potential of completely new topologies, where multiple listeners can access new features to enhance their viewing.  The world’s largest TV manufacturer – Samsung, along with LG, Philips and Panasonic have all announced that their 2026 models will include Auracast.  Looking at predicted sales volumes from analysts like Omdia and Counterpoint, it means that by the end of the year, around 150 million viewers will have Auracast in their homes, with the ability to connect a new generation of earbuds, headphones, speakers and hearing aids to their TVs. That’s the critical mass that the market needs to bring in the next audio revolution.  Once users experience it and start asking for it, it puts enormous pressure on other sectors to follow and include Auracast support in their products. 

What makes this timing doubly important is the fact that the TV industry expects this to be a bumper year for sales, driven by the 2026 World Cup, which is exactly the push that Auracast needs.

Why TVs need Auracast

If you talk to any audiologist, they’;ll tell you that TVs bring them most of their customers.  One of the first signs of hearing loss is the growing argument between partners about the level of the TV volume, and the fight for custody of the remote control.  That’s the point where the person turning the volume up should get a hearing test, but there’s normally years of simmering domestic tension before it reaches that point.  Auracast may not get people to a hearing test any earlier, but it can do a lot for domestic harmony.

Adding a Bluetooth Auracast transmitter to a TV allows it to wirelessly broadcast the audio signal to headphones, hearing aids, earbuds and soundbars at the same  time as the TV’s internal speakers are playing the sound.  “At the same time” is very important, as if there’s any significant delay, then the audio appears out of sync with what you’re watching.  If there’s ambient audio present from the TV’s speakers, any delay in getting the sound to a Bluetooth headset is perceived as an echo, making it even more difficult for a listener to understand.  Because of that, one of the key design parameters for Auracast was to ensure that the delay, which is technically referred to as “latency” is sufficiently low that there’s no problem.  Everyone in the room, whether they’re listening to the audio on a speaker, hearing aid or earbud will hear it at exactly the same time.

No more fights over volume

Although Auracast is all about sharing audio, the one thing you don’t need to share is the volume.  Unlike a standard TV, which is always too loud or too quiet for some of its viewers, with Auracast, everyone can control their own volume.  Each hearing aid, earbud or headset provides personal volume control, so the arguments about volume disappear. 

I hate Football / Cookery / Crime

Although the TV manufacturers predict it will be a bumper year for new TV sales, not everyone is going to be thrilled by the prospect of the World Cup booming around the home.  In a fair number, there’s likely to be a rush to buy partners the latest Auracast earbuds and headsets to go with the new TV, so that they can enjoy their football in silence.  They could be the ideal Birthday present from long suffering spouses, who may find that they receive a similar present once the World Cup finishes and the TV returns to its normal fare of cookery and crime series.

You can still hear it in the Kitchen / Bathroom / Bedroom

Auracast came into being to provide a more flexible way of sharing sound in public venues, such as theatres and cinemas, where it was envisaged as an evolution from the current Telecoil hearing loops. 

To achieve that, it’s designed to have a greater range than most people associate with Bluetooth headsets., which provides another advantage for TV watching.  If you’re watching a live program and desperately need to go to the kitchen to get a new beer, or the bathroom to get rid of the previous one, you should still be able to hear the commentary without missing any key moments. 

It’s all about tipping points

As with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, broadcast TV and mobile phones, the move from future promise to everyday usage is all about the tipping point that comes when there is a critical mass of devices.  Initially people purchasing these TVs may not realise they contain Auracast, but as the momentum builds and users appreciate the advantages it offers, it will become the “must-have” feature for every new TV purchase.  The 2026 World Cup is being billed as the greatest global sporting event.  Its enduring legacy may be that it’s the event that propels Auracast from technical innovation to an everyday experience that changes the way the world thinks about audio.

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This poses a quandary for the industry.  They’ve invested significant amounts of money developing new, high quality codecs, which can sample audio at rates which only bats are likely to hear.  The components industry has also poured cash into developing new audio transducers, producing micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) speakers, capable of rendering audio at frequencies way beyond the limits of human hearing.  This technology has led to a new generation of microphones with frequency responses which are flat up to 100kHz – a major step forward from common studio microphones, which typically have frequency responses that start falling off at 14kHz.  Once again, however, what they capture is beyond human hearing. 

It’s all very clever technology. But nobody really knows what to do with it.  In the absence of any credible ideas, the the audio industry, which has done what it does best – coin a new initialism of FBA to describe the experience as Full Bandwidth Audio.  But, at that point, they have stumbled.  With the exception of a small, audiophile market, who will pay obscene amounts of money to convince themselves they have super-human hearing, the audio industry has found little consumer interest in purchasing something they can’t hear.  They desperately need to find a new market where consumers will shell out money for new equipment and new subscriptions.

As often happens in audio, when the industry incumbents struggle with innovation, development appears from outside, where a totally different range of companies have started exploring the potential new markets which could be created by embracing Full Bandwidth Audio.  In this case, that innovation is coming from a rather unlikely source – the pet industry.

The pet sector is currently experiencing spectacular growth.  In the U.S. it reached almost $157 billion in total expenditure in 2025, driven by increasing pet ownership among younger generations, and high demand for specialized pet food.  Analysts like Capstone talk about the drive for pet humanization, noting that investor appetite for the pet sector continues to be very strong.  (Note that the industry no longer talks about anthropomorphism; it’s all about humanization, as the bonds between pet and owner become ever stronger.  Capstone rather excitedly report that they are receiving inbound calls on a weekly basis from groups looking to enter or expand in the space.  And “Expand” is what they intend to do with FBA.

One of the leading examples of how to play this market is cat and dog “wine”.  The market for these non-alcoholic, nutrient-packed, or herbal beverages formulated specifically for pet consumption has experienced notable growth, driven by the “humanification” of pet diets and the desire for experiential, calming, health-functional and even shared treats. Yes – owners really have started eating pet food.  It’s a market that likes punning, featuring products like “CharDOGnay”, “Pinot Meow” and “Pawsecco”.  375ml bottles typically sell for around $15, often costing more than the wine that their owner will be drinking alongside their pet.  But that’s the attraction of the market.

Analysts AMR have been tracking the size of the PET wine bottle market and predict shipments of around 270 million in 2026.  If we take figures for the global pampered pet market as being around 130 million, (about 30% of pets) and assume around 10% of those are being wined and dined by their human companions, then that estimate of 270 million PET wine bottles equates to around one date night every three weeks for the lucky Fidos and Kittys.

Premiumization is another common industry word, signifying the fact that pet owners have opted for higher-quality goods and services that mirror their own consumption habits. Younger consumers in particular have displayed a higher propensity to spend on their animal companions. Generation Z (aged 13 to 28) reported spending $6,103 on average annually on their pets, according to a recent Harris Poll. What is attracting the interest of the industry is that this is exactly the same demographic that in previous generations had embraced instances of audio disruption, buying transistor radios, Walkmans, iPods and Spotify.  It’s largely orthogonal to the established audiophile market that the audio industry is concentrating on, and represents a completely new opportunity.

Humanisation is a booming market.  Young and lonely owners can have a quiet night in with their pet, drinking wine and eating snacks together, while watching their favourite film.  All that’s missing is the feeling their pets are reacting in the same way to the film.  That’s where FBA come in.  There are already channels targeting pets; TV channels like DOGTV and Happy Dog TV exist, claiming to  reduce anxiety and provide stimulation for pets through specially curated visuals and sounds. However, these mainly offer content designed to keep pets calm and entertained when home alone.  Where FBA is exciting new entrants to the pet market is through the possibility of using higher frequency audio to stimulate specific emotions in pets which could match those of their human owners. 

Most of the activity in this sector is still happening in stealth mode, as the companies involved are keen to have a solid product before announcing it to the market.  Historically, there has been a limited amount of research into the response of animals to high frequency sounds beyond the extent of human hearing.  Most of this has been about control, from inaudible dog whistles, to broadcasting sounds which produce a fear response, predominantly to try to keep animals from where they might cause damage.  The most well known of these are bird scarers at airports and fish deterrents at the cooling inlets at power stations.  In recent years, the emphasis has changed, as researchers have realised that sounds in this higher frequency range, inaudible to humans, can be used to induce a range of emotions in animals from comfort to low level anxiety.

Several startups are working on how to match these reactions with popular TV streaming series, adding an FBA stream that mimics the expected emotion of the human viewer.  So, when a  film inspires an adrenaline rush in the viewer, the FBA track would result in a similar reaction being felt by the pet.  When a romcom produces a warm surge of love, your dog or cat would respond similarly.  It is a blatant play to humanisation, where the sales pitch is to share emotion.  Despite the fact that the pet’s emotion is unlikely to have anyting to do with the film’s content, the owner will easily convince themselves that they are experiencing a shared passion.  Somewhat cynically, the new industry already talks of FBA as Fur Baby Audio.

There is a problem.  Adding a FBA track to popular video content would be a gargantuan task, like adding new languages.  Industry players are already referring to this approach as Petflix (although that name is already in use), but it is difficult to see how adding a FBA emotion track to every video stream could ever recoup its production costs.  However, the emergence of edge AI processors is changing the game, allowing a new breed of companies like EmPEThy to generate these FBA audio elements on the fly.  The FBA algorithms in their products analyse the sound track of streaming videos in real time as the film is viewed, assessing the type of emotion that is likely to be present.   It uses this analysis to select from its database of emotional phonemes, rendering these in their dedicated FBA speakers, which the owner will position next to their TV or sofa.  They claim to have developed over five hundred of these emotional phonemes, which can accurately match the reactions of the human viewer.  The appeal of their approach is that their FBA box can be sold as a stand-alone box that is attached to the audio output of any TV or PC.  They also claim good results with an integrated microphone which picks up ambient sound from speakers.

Cat engagement appears to be one of the first applications to come to market.  Feliciti – an early stage startup which is due to emerge from stealth mode, is rumoured to have attracted significant funding for their claimed ability to keep cats interested for extended viewing times.  This is something which has always been seen as one of the challenges separating dog and cat engagement, with cats more likely to disengage with their owner during the course of the film.

All of the new entrants are focusing on subscription models, following the learning of current pet accessory suppliers who have discovered that owners who are happy to spend money on pets as companions are generally prepared to commit to annual plans.  Subscription models have performed well for dog and cat treat boxes, with the average cost of a monthly treat box from Pampered Pooch or DogBox sitting at around $55 per month.  Cat treat boxes are generally cheaper, but the difficulty of keeping cats engaged may mean they could command significantly higher FBA subscriptions if the promises of prolonged engagement can be met.

Never shy to introduce new acronyms, some of the FBA players have recently coined HAPPI – the Home Alone Pampered Pet Indulgers to describe their target market.  They report that 49% of U.S. adults who have never been married own a pet, 55% of Divorced/Separated/Widowed individuals own pets, 57.1% of single women living alone own pets.  Single men living alone with pets have traditionally been less common, but have recently seen a rapid increase, rising to 42.8%. 

What is less clear is when the first products will appear.  A few of the players are looking at product announcements at next year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2027, but there is a strong feeling that some startups may try an earlier soft launch to grab the Christmas market.  One question that the industry is grappling with is the route to market.  It’s unlikely that any traditional audio companies are willing to participate, at least in the short term as it is too far from their comfort zone.  However, FBA entrants need to supply hardware to connect to TVs or streaming devices, which includes some fairly challenging new technologies.  The companies developing the emotional phonemes also need to build their algorithmic models and work out licensing and application programming interfaces.  Neither are trivial, which may mean that we see little before 2027.

What is clear is that there is a huge potential untapped market, where pet owners appear happy to pay fo get emotionally closer to their pets.  If subscriptions match the volume of wine shown above, it implies a market value of around $7.8 billion, just for annual subscriptions.  That’s larger than the $7.2 billion that FutureSource Consulting are projecting for the premium consumer audio market.  A major attraction for investors is that it is a completely new space, implying that new entrants have no competition from major players, at least in the early years.  Those who can get market share have a clear run to become unicorns, which is driving the funding interest.  Although the audio hardware behind FBA was designed primarily for audiophiles, it looks as if it will spawn a completely new audio industry based on indulgent owners and their fur babies.

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One of the great things about being an engineer is that you occasionally get to see the products you design being used.  It’s difficult to describe the emotion when you see someone you don’t know getting value from something you’re responsible for. When you’re involved in standards, that can be even more powerful, as you see the effect of having bounced ideas off other people, where the resulting whole often seems greater than the sum of the parts. In some cases, you also see people using the products in ways you’d never imagined, discovering new ways of working and enhancing their lives. That has been one of the greatest rewards I’ve had in working on developing the Auracast broadcast audio specifications

How it started

The journey started back in 2013, when a small group of hearing aid companies came to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) to ask if they could collaborate to make hearing aids work better with mobile phones. I was at a conference in Shanghai, and out of the blue was asked if I could help by chairing that development. The intervening years have been a fascinating journey.

The initial intention was to find a low-power way of getting audio from phones and PCs to hearing aids. Nothing too revolutionary, but it needed to be much lower power, as hearing aid users typically wear them for around ten hours a day without taking them out to recharge. So, minimising power consumption was vital. They also wanted to support stereo. This was before anyone had thought of wireless earbuds, so it was breaking a lot of new ground. 

The biggest innovation was to find a way for the same audio to be distributed to multiple sets of hearing aids at the same time. That would mimic the experience that hearing aid users had with inductive audio loops. These, known as telecoil loops, were used in theatres and public buildings to help hearing aid users all pick up the same audio signal. That was something Bluetooth® technology had never done before. All Bluetooth audio products had a one-to-one connection. The approach had always been for a user to send a single audio stream from their phone or PC to their headphones or speakers. Now, multiple people could listen to the same audio at the same time.

That may sound pretty simple, but the subtleties get very interesting. That became obvious when we started talking to people with hearing loss and people who are passionate about the quality of their music. Those two communities drive very different design paths in the hearing aid and consumer audio industries. The latter has become focused on ultimate audio quality, but often sees that as a common nirvana for all of its users. In contrast, the hearing aid industry is very aware of the different levels and types of hearing loss in their users and puts a lot of effort into allowing each of them to customise their hearing experience. At the most basic level, it allows everyone to set their own listening volume.

Individual audio control

Providing individual control is a subtle difference in perspective, but it has a major effect on the way that we designed Auracast broadcast audio. If you think of a family sitting listening to their TV, some may be listening to the ambient sound from the TV while others may be using hearing aids. Traditionally, that leads to an argument about the volume level, with everyone fighting to turn it up or down. With Auracast broadcast audio, each set of hearing aids has its own personal volume control, independent of what the TV is doing. Everyone can listen at the volume they want.  Each individual can swap from the TV to take a phone call without interrupting the other family members. For the first time, everyone can do what they want independently. Which is turning the way Bluetooth audio traditionally works on its head.

One other innovation was the realisation that those family members might not want to listen to the same audio stream. As TV streaming has developed, some of the streaming companies have realised that many soundtracks can be difficult for some viewers to follow, especially where there are loud background noises or music. Film companies have known this for years and include audio accessible tracks which reduce the background noise and enhance conversations, which are usually sent to the telecoil installations in cinemas. TV streamers have started doing this as well, but have had no way to separate the streams for different listeners. Either everyone had to listen to the normal stream, or everyone had to hear the accessible stream. Seeing the opportunity to make life easier, we designed Auracast broadcast audio so that it could transmit multiple different audio streams at the same time. Once again, the choice of what to listen to is made by each listener. 

The ability to transmit multiple different audio streams is not limited to a choice of normal or accessible stream. They could also contain different languages. So, some listeners in the room could watch a program in Korean while others could choose a dubbed English version. 

Adopting Auracast broadcast audio

As we started to explain and prototype these new ways of listening, we found that the consumer audio industry became very interested in the new possibilities. Shortly after we’d started working on the new specifications, the first Bluetooth® wireless earbuds had appeared on the market.  These solved a few of the problems we’d identified in proprietary ways, but were just a stepping stone on the way to what we were aiming for. We suddenly found a much wider audience for the features that were being developed within the Auracast solution. What was fascinating was that they didn’t just come from the members designing the specifications or their companies.  Alongside their input, we actively went out and talked to potential users, taking their feedback into account as we developed the new standards.

Fast forward ten years, and we released the first group of specifications. For those of us writing the specifications, we knew that we would need to be patient before we saw products come to market.  Miniature products like hearing aids and earbuds are incredibly difficult to design and manufacture.  We were also aware of how many steps it took to get inductive telecoil loops deployed in buildings and public infrastructure – that was a process that traditionally tool decades rather than years.  But we were about to be surprised.

As the first products started to appear, we began to see a new level of excitement coming back from early adopters, as well as larget scale implementers.  Normally, with new technology, those early adopters are young and geeky, but this time we saw a much wider range of feedback. We also saw an unexpected range of products.  There were hearing aids and Auracast transmitters, which addressed the original use cases, but there were also party speakers, which people could connect together for impromptu parties.  Smartphones started to include applications which let you share a music stream with friends. TVs included Auracast capabilities, ready for new use cases.  Most importantly, people started playing with these new products, doing things we’d expected but also thinking up new uses we’d not envisaged.  The biggest surprise was that infrastructure owners, such as theatres, churches, even bus operators, took the plunge and started experimenting.  It normally takes between five and fifteen years for hearing assistance to be specified and installed in public spaces.  Now, people were buying Auracast products online and doing it in five days.

Continued Auracast momentum

As momentum has gathered, I’ve been fortunate to visit and talk to many of the people who have made these installations happen. I’ve heard Auracast broadcast audio in small village halls and large theatres. I’ve spoken to a composer as one of his works was broadcast by an Auracast solution in a major international concert hall. There have been conversations with people designing airports, train stations, schools, and railway carriages — all of whom want to use Auracast broadcast audio in interesting ways.  It’s being promoted at hearing wellness festivals. During the recent World Hearing Day on 3^rd March, many people experienced the potential of Auracast for the first time, and loved it.  An amazing number of different people are beginning to think about how shared audio can change the way they communicate, whether that’s for public information, new forms of entertainment, or just helping everyday conversation. 

We’re also getting fascinating feedback about how Auracast broadcast audio can help people who have issues with crowds and noisy environments, helping them to have better experiences when they’re out in their communities. They’re also telling us what else they’d like to see (or hear), which is informing the next generation of specifications we’re working on.

It is an absolute joy for us to see the way that Auracast broadcast audio is being taken up and used. If you’ve not experienced it yet, it’s coming your way and will soon be in your phones, TVs PCs, earbuds, and the buildings and infrastructure around you. It’s changing the way that we’re able to use audio, bringing in a new wave of innovation. I don’t think any of us expected this return when we started, but it has been a privilege to be part of its development.

You can find out more about Auracast and where it’s being used on the Bluetooth website at https://www.bluetooth.com/auracast/.  During the development I’ve written articles about its potential and design decisions at https://www.nickhunn.com/?s=auracast, and you can keep up with the latest industry news at Phil Creighton’s excellent www.aurahear.com site.  Welcome to a new world of shared audio.

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All of these are largely societal behaviours learnt from your parents, or determined by where you live.  In the case of gas or electric, that’s heavily based on location.  If you grew up in a town, you’re likely to favour gas.  If your upbringing was more rural, where you’d not have had a gas supply, electricity would be the preference.  Both have strong advocates, and the web is full of opinions and rabbit holes to fall in, but it looks as if that won’t remain a choice for long, as the UK Government is considering ways of stopping us cooking with gas.

Not surprisingly, this is one of the latest ideas from Ed Miliband’s Dash for Net Zero.  As his initiatives start to unravel, DESNZ – the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, is getting sneakier in their attempt to change the way we live.  The proposal to “ban” gas cookers and hobs are contained in their latest consultation document on Home Energy Model: Energy Performance Certificates.  Energy Performance Certificates, or EPCs are documents assessing how energy efficient your home is.  You have to pay to get an EPC before you can sell a house, and there is increasing pressure to use them as a policy to force the “upgrading” of rented houses and flats, forcing landlords to improve the physical condition of the properties. 

At a simplistic level, they feel like a good idea, but like many broad brushes, they quickly fall over.  Britain has some of the worst housing stock in the developed world.  The UK has a relatively moderate climate, thanks to the presence of the Gulf Stream.  Without the more severe winters of our European neighbours, successive Governments have been happy for householders to burn cheap coal and gas to keep their homes warm.  On the few occasions when they have though about tightening up building standards, large builders have lobbied successively against major changes.  Now, with legally binding net zero targets, the realisation that heating these poorly insulated homes generates around a quarter of the UKs carbon emissions is causing panic.  Carrots, in the form of subsidies for insulation and heat-pumps haven’t really worked (unless you’re a cowboy installer, in which case they’ve worked very well), so attention is turning to finding sticks to beat up property owners.

The current and updated EPC scheme gives every house an energy rating that goes from “A” (toasty warm and so well insulated it will overheat if you have more than one child) to “G” (book your hyperthermia hospital admission now).  Traditionally, a man (87% of EPC assessors in the UK are male) comes round with a tablet, looks at your windows and what type of heating you have, and gives you a score.  They also provide helpful suggestions on how you could make your home more energy efficient, along with estimated costs for those improvements, which are rarely accurate.

Ever keen to increase the amount of data they have about your house, this new consultation is proposing that rather than having an inspector largely guessing at how efficient you house is, they can supplement it with information captured by an SMETER.  An SMETER isn’t just a smart meter, it’s a Smart smart meter, which can compare your internal heating with the weather outside to provide real numbers about your home’s thermal performance.  There’s a lot to be said for that, as accurate data helps you make better decisions.  But for DESNZ, the approach to better consumer decisions is no longer nudges from better data, but a hearty application of the stick.  So, the new  SMETER data will be used to help determine your EPC rating.

This is where the proposals get a bit freaky.  As you read them, it becomes apparent that the doubleplusgood of DESNZ’s netzero aspiration is an “A/B” rating for your EPC.  You should install solar panels (but not too many), along with battery storage.  You should have a bidirectional EV charger, which means that your vehicle’s battery can supply electricity back to the grid if necessary.  There’s a naughty corner if you use any fossil fuels for heating (and we’ll probably have scented candle police to monitor that) and the worst crime of all will be cooking with gas.  Nobody in that naughty corner will be allowed an “A/B” rating.   In DESNZ’s eyes, it’s Electrons Good, Weakly Ionized Plasmas Bad.

This is dogma, but they try so hard to wrap it up with scientific “evidence”.  They sell the eradication of gas cooking as a health benefit, reviving the concerns about internal air pollution from gas flames.  What they miss are the practical implications.  They ignore the financial cost and impracticability of converting over half of UK homes to electric cooking.  In most of Europe, gas is used for cooking in around 30% of homes.  In the UK it’s the most common way to cook meals, with 54% of homes using gas.  Nowhere does the consultation mention how you retrain half of the population to cook differently.  Then there’s the practical issues. 

Putting aside whether gas is better or worse, you can’t easily swap out a gas hob for an electric one.  Electric hobs need a 45 Amp feed back to the fusebox, which you won’t have if your house or flat was fitted out for gas.  Installing that is costly and disruptive.  At some point, hob manufacturers might include large lithium batteries to store power locally, so they could run from a 13A socket, but they’ll not be cheap, and as far as I know they don’t exist yet.  Alternatively, you could give up using a hob or oven and buy a microwave or an air fryer.  But based on the examples you see on their packaging, it seems they’re generally the entry appliances to ultra processed food and long term chronic health conditions.  So, the NHS might have something to say about those unintended consequences and the resulting cost of treating an even less healthy population.  But none of that appears to have been considered.

The more you look at this consultation, the more it looks as if it has been written by and for people who live in relatively modern homes in nice suburbs.  They’ll have solar panels, drives to park their electric vehicles with their own “his and hers” charging points and they wouldn’t contemplate cooking with gas because everyone on MasterChef uses electric ovens and induction hobs.  It feels like an exercise in Mr Miliband and his civil servants mansplaining about why their houses deserve their “A/B” ratings and ours don’t.  And why everyone else needs to spend money they don’t have on expensive retrofitting.  It is far too flavoured with entitled, arrogant nonsense.

I don’t have an issue with the aspirations that we should all have more energy efficient homes and pay less for energy, but this Consultation feels all about virtue signalling, whilst ignoring the real problems of the fuel poor and the millions of people living in older homes.  Until DESNZ evolves to grasp that reality, it’s unlikely that anything will change.  Other than making it ever more expensive to sell or rent a property.

A number of organisations have published their response to this consultation, enthusiastically endorsing the proposal that gas cooking should prevent a property attaining an “A/B” rating.  The responses I’ve seen have all been from netzero pressure groups or companies with a vested interest in retrofitting.  None have come from anyone looking at health or social implications.  But unless those arguments are heard, DESNZ will assume that gas cooking can be ostracised, putting policies in place which will place a burden on over half of the population.  The consultation ends on 18^th March, so there’s still time to respond.  Or write to your MP about the cavalier way that DESNZ is attempting to change British culture.

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