How to Watch TV with Hearing Aids Using Auracast

If you wear hearing aids — or live with someone who does — you probably know the nightly negotiation. The TV volume creeps up. Someone asks for subtitles. Someone else says the subtitles are distracting. The person with hearing loss turns their aids up, the person without turns the TV down, and somehow nobody ends up actually enjoying the show.

You're not alone. It's one of the most common friction points in households where one partner has hearing loss and the other doesn't. The good news: a newer Bluetooth standard called Auracast finally solves this properly — not with a workaround, but with a real, built-for-purpose fix. Here's how it works, and how to set it up in your living room in about five minutes.

Why the TV Volume Fight Is So Hard to Solve

Watching TV with hearing loss isn't just about volume. Dialogue clarity, background music, sound effects, and fast speech all compete in the mix. Cranking the TV louder often makes things worse for the hearing aid wearer — more volume, but not more clarity — while making the room uncomfortable for everyone else.

So couples and families end up in one of a few familiar compromises:

• The TV is loud enough for one person and painful for the other.
• Subtitles are always on, which some people love and others find exhausting.
• One person wears bulky TV headphones while the other listens to the room's speakers — which means you can't really talk, laugh, or react together anymore.

That last point matters more than it sounds. Watching TV together is a shared experience. Any "solution" that isolates one person into their own audio bubble quietly removes the togetherness that made movie night worth having.

Why Traditional Fixes Fall Short

Before we get to Auracast, it's worth understanding why the usual options never quite fixed the problem.

Soundbars and TV speakers

A soundbar improves general audio quality, and dialogue-enhancement modes can help a little. But it's still one volume for the whole room. If your hearing loss requires the TV at 70 and your partner is comfortable at 35, no speaker in the world bridges that gap.

Dedicated TV headphones

RF or Bluetooth TV headphones (the over-ear kind with a charging base) work — for one person. They're often heavy for long viewing sessions, they sit awkwardly over hearing aids, and they cut you off from the room. And if two people in the household wear hearing aids, you need two entirely separate systems.

Classic Bluetooth pairing

Standard Bluetooth audio is a one-to-one connection. Your TV pairs to one headset or one hearing aid streamer at a time. Want a second listener? You're out of luck, or you're buying proprietary multi-headphone kits that only work with their own brand. It's a patchwork, and it shows.

Each of these treats the symptom. None of them lets a room full of people hear the same TV, at the same time, each at their own preferred volume.

How Auracast Changes the Equation

Auracast is a broadcast audio standard introduced with Bluetooth LE Audio in 2024. The simplest way to think about it: your TV becomes a tiny radio station, and any compatible device in the room can tune in.

That one change unlocks things Bluetooth never could:

• One-to-many. A single Auracast transmitter broadcasts to an unlimited number of receivers simultaneously. One hearing aid wearer, two, five — everyone tunes into the same stream.
• Personal volume, always. Each listener controls volume on their own device — their hearing aids, earbuds, or headphones. One person at 80%, another at 30%, the TV speakers muted entirely. Nobody affects anyone else.
• No pairing bottleneck. Joining an Auracast broadcast is more like connecting to Wi-Fi than pairing Bluetooth. Once set up, it's seamless.
• Works with what you already own. A growing number of modern hearing aids (from major brands like ReSound, Jabra, Starkey, Philips, and others) are Auracast-compatible out of the box, as are many newer earbuds and headphones.

In practice, this means: the person with hearing loss streams crisp dialogue straight into their hearing aids at their ideal volume, while everyone else listens through the TV speakers at a normal level — or joins the broadcast themselves with earbuds. Same room, same show, same moments, different volumes. Finally.

Meet VOCE+ : Auracast TV Audio for the Whole Household

This is exactly what the VOCE+ transmitter/receiver from NEXUM was built for.

The setup is refreshingly simple. The VOCE+ TX transmitter plugs into your TV's audio output — 3.5mm headphone jack, optical (TOSLINK), or USB — and immediately begins broadcasting the TV's audio over Auracast. From there, anyone in the room can listen on:

• Their own Auracast-compatible hearing aids
• Auracast earbuds or headphones they already own
• A VOCE+ RX receiver, which turns any wired headphones into an Auracast listener

The TX unit weighs just 4.2 grams — smaller than a house key — so it disappears behind your TV rather than becoming another box on the media console.

But what about lip-sync delay?

It's the first question everyone asks, and rightly so. Auracast's LE Audio architecture is dramatically faster than classic Bluetooth, and VOCE+ operates at roughly 50ms of latency. For context, most people can't perceive audio-video mismatch until it exceeds around 100ms, and many TVs and streaming apps introduce 20–40ms of their own processing delay anyway. At 50ms, dialogue stays glued to the actors' lips — no distracting echo of the room's speakers, no half-beat-late sound effects.

How to Set It Up (About 5 Minutes)

1. Plug the VOCE+ TX into your TV. Use the optical output if your TV has one (best quality), or the 3.5mm headphone jack or USB port if it doesn't.
2. Power it up via USB — most TVs have a spare USB port that works perfectly, so there's no wall adapter hunting.
3. Connect your receivers. Auracast hearing aids and earbuds join the broadcast through their companion app or the device's Bluetooth menu — select the VOCE+ broadcast the way you'd join a Wi-Fi network. For the VOCE+ RX, it connects out of the box.
4. Set everyone's volume independently. Hearing aids use their normal volume controls; each RX has its own. The TV speakers can stay on for others in the room, or be muted entirely.
5. Watch together. That's it. No re-pairing, no nightly setup ritual.

Frequently Asked Questions

My TV doesn't have an optical output. Can I still use VOCE+?

Yes. The VOCE+ TX also works with your TV's 3.5mm headphone jack and USB audio output, and most TVs from the last decade have at least one of these. If your TV only has HDMI ARC, an inexpensive HDMI audio extractor (around $15–25) bridges the gap.

Are my hearing aids compatible with Auracast?

Auracast support began rolling out in hearing aids from 2023 onward. Many current models from ReSound, Jabra Enhance, Starkey, Philips, Beltone, and others include it. The fastest way to check: look for "Auracast" or "LE Audio" in your hearing aid's specs or companion app, or ask your audiologist. And if your aids aren't Auracast-ready yet, the VOCE+ RX receiver lets you listen with any wired headphones in the meantime.

Will the delay cause lip-sync issues?

No. At approximately 50ms, VOCE+'s latency sits well below the threshold most people can perceive (typically 80–100ms). Speech, sound effects, and music stay synchronized with the picture.

Can more than one person listen at once?

Yes — that's the whole point of Auracast. A single VOCE+ TX broadcasts to multiple listeners simultaneously: hearing aids, earbuds, and RX receivers, all at once, each with independent volume.

Will it interfere with the TV's regular speakers?

Not at all. You can keep the TV speakers on for family members listening in the room while others stream through the broadcast. Everyone hears the same show at their own comfortable level.

Watch TV Together Again — at Everyone's Perfect Volume

The volume argument was never really about volume. It was about two people wanting to share the same couch, the same show, and the same evening — and hearing technology finally caught up with that simple wish.

The VOCE+ Standard Pack (1 TX + 1 RX) includes everything you need to start: a transmitter for your TV and a receiver ready to go out of the box, with free shipping and a 1-year warranty. Setup takes minutes, and it works with the Auracast hearing aids and earbuds you may already own.

Get the VOCE+ Standard Pack → and make tonight's movie night the first one where nobody touches the volume button.

Related Reading

• How to Set Up Your NEXUM VOCE+: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Auracast and Hearing Accessibility: A New Era of Inclusive Audio
• VOCE+ vs. Avantree: Which Auracast Transmitter Is Right for You?

Ready to try VOCE+? Shop the NEXUM VOCE+ Auracast Transmitter.