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conversation out to the earbud and audio from the earbud s microphone back to the phone
cis carries the audio stream from the phone to the other earbud it is up to the application
to determine whether it is a stereo stream thats being sent or mono in the latter case the
same mono audio data is sent separately over cis and cis to the two earbuds
context type s
to make decisions about which audio streams they want to connect to devices need to know
more about what those streams contain or what theyre for context type s have been
introduced to describe the current use case or use cases associated with an audio stream their
values are defined in the bluetooth assigned numbers document for generic audio context
type s can be used by both initiators and acceptors to indi cate what type of activity or
connection they want to participate in and are applicable to both unicast and broadcast
with bluetooth classic audio profiles the conversation between a central and peripheral
device is basically i want to make an audio co nnection with no more information about
what it is as the hfp and adp profiles are essentially single purpose profiles thats not a
problem but in bluetooth le audio where the audio stream could be used for a ringtone
voice recognition playing mu sic providing satnav instructions or a host of other applications
its useful to know a little more about the intended reason for requesting a stream thats
where context type s come in
as well see later context type s are used as optional metadata d uring the unicast stream
configuration process an acceptor can expose which context type s it is prepared to accept
chapter new concepts in bluetooth le audio
at any point in time for example if a hearing aid wearer is having a private nonbluetooth
conversation which they dont want interrup ted they can set their hearing aids to be
unavailable for a stream associated with a ringtone context type that means that the
hearing aids will silently reject an incoming call thats more universal than putting their phone
on silent as by using context type s they will reject an incoming call from any phone they
have connected or a voip call from any other connected device they could also set the
ringtone context type while they are in a call to prevent any other call interrupting the
current one this can be done on a per device basis meaning you could restrict incoming
calls to one specific phone providing a powerful method for an acceptor to control wh ich
devices can request an audio stream
an initiator uses the context type when it is attempting to establish an audio stream
informing the acceptor of the associated use case if that context type is set to be unavailable
on the acceptor the configuration and stream establishment process is terminated this
happens on the acl link befo re an isochronous stream is set up which means that these
decisions can take place in parallel to an existing audio stream without disturbing it regardless
of whether the request is from the device currently providing the stream or another initiator
wanting to establish or replace an existing stream it doesnt matter whether an existing audio
stream is unicast or broadcast which means that a hearing aid user listening to their tv using
a broadcast audio stream can use context type s to prevent their cu rrent stream being
disturbed by any phone call
there are currently twelve context type s defined in the generic audio assigned numbers
document which are exposed in a two octet bitfield of context type s as shown in table
with each bit representing a context type this allows multiple values to be used at any one
time
bit context type description
unspecified any type of audio use case which is not explici tly supported by
another context type on a device
conversational conversation between humans typically voice calls which can
be of any form eg landline cellular voip ptt etc
media audio content typically this is one way such as radio tv or
music playback it is the same type of content as is handled by
adp
game audio associated with gaming which may be a mix of sound
effects music and conversation normally with low latency
demands
instruct ional instructional information such as satnav directions
announcements or user guidance which often have a higher
priority than other use cases
section context types
bit context type description
voice
assistants manmachine communication and voice recognition other than
what is covered by instructional it is implied that this is in the
form of speech
live live audio where both the bluetooth audio stream and the
ambient sound is likely to be perceived at the same time
implying latency constraints
sound effects sound s such as keyb oard clicks touch feedback and other
application specific sounds
notifications attention seeking sounds such as announcing the arrival of a
message
ringtone notification of an incoming call in the form of an inband audio
stream the ringtone context type is not applied to an out of
band ringtone which is signalled using ccp and tbs
alerts machine generated notifications of events these may range
from critical battery alerts doorbells stopwatch and clock alarms
to an alert about the completion of a cycle from a kitchen
appliance or white goods
emergency
alarm a high priority alarm such as a smoke or fire alarm
rfu not yet allocated
table currently defined context type s
most of these are obvious but two of the context type s are worth special attention
ringtone and unspecified
the ringtone context type is used to announce an incoming phone call but only where
there is an inband ringtone which requires an audio stream to be set up if the user was
already receiving an audio stream from a different device to the one with the incoming phone
call this could be problematic to signal the incoming call to the user without dropping the
current audio stream would require at least one of the earbuds to set up a separate unicast
stream from the second initiator in practice many acceptors are unlikely to have the
resources to support concurrent streams from different initiators at the same time the
acceptor could drop the current audio stream to switch to the inband ringtone but if they
then reject the call theyd need to restore the original audio stream in most cases a better
when context types are used in text they are e nclosed in guillemets ie and
an inband ringtone is one where the sound is carried in an audio stream from the phone so you
can hear your customised ringtone or message in contrast an out of band ringtone is a sound