We all know Bluetooth isn't a perfect protocol. Not even for something as simple as audio...
In fact, in many common real-world scenarios, it is exceedingly annoying. I'll quickly outline my problem, which is likely a similar flavour to your problem and most others who share this frustration.
Personally, I have a laptop, a secondary laptop, a 2in1 (ie. Surface Pro clone), and iPad, and a cell phone which, ideally, I'd like to pair to my D90 III Sabre.
Laptop 1, iPad, and S22 all support BT5, and so LDAC. But Laptop 2 and 2in1 CPUs are 8250u and 8650u, and their WiFi adapters are period correct. Not a huge deal if pairing wasn't an issue, but with the pairing, and having to spend money and time configuring and reconfiguring LDAC on Windows machines specifically, it all starts to become a little too much. ESPECIALLY when the LDAC codec I tested for Laptop 1 with my best antenna supported an average bitrate of around (only) 425kbps.
425kbps? That's definitely not in lossless territory - the entire point...
It became enough to make me wonder: is there a better way to do this? A way that I don't have to disable bluetooth on every other device I don't want to connect to the DAC while I'm using it, even if I'm using those other devices too and they have another essential bluetooth device paired...
Well, at first I used Windows Wireless Display protocol, connected to a spare machine plugged into the DAC with USB, and set the wireless display as the audio device. That worked for the Laptop and 2in1. It worked great and sounded decent, but I wanted to do the same thing with the phone and iPad, but they don't have apps to support wireless display.
In time, I came across a free for personal use program called SpaceDesk - it allows you to connect wirelessly to and from any android, apple, or windows machine to others!
You run it on the Windows machines as a service, and you open the app on the device you want to be the slave, and it gives you a list of all machines running the SpaceDesk service on your local network. You just click on the IP address you want to be the master, and BAM, 17 milliseconds later (or so..), authentication! You enable or disable audio in the settings on the slave device, set the desired resolution to present to the host machine. The host machine sees the display as a connected device, you use the Windows Display manager page once connected. The audio device shows up in the Control Panel > Sound, in the Playback tab - just like a local USB device or PCI device!
The latency is low, dropouts are basically never. Video quality is great, my only gripe is you don't get to set the bit depth or sample rate, or even see it. And the documentation doesn't tell you. I do believe that whatever it is, is static and pretty high. It sounds about the same as the LDAC, re quality and latency is superior. No dropouts...
OK, so there's the outline of a very convenient, cross-platform way, of routing sound from multiple devices to multiple devices, at your whim, Bluetooth not required.
I'm sure someone will come across this and love it - I do.
But what I'd love more is something that does this, and lets you set the audio sample rate and bit depth. Even better would be if it was bit perfect!
If it doesn't exist, maybe AI will make it!
"Imagine an AI could make your program... straight from your thoughts! ... Think Base 55" lol.
Imagine all the new datacenters going up are for cats. What would that story look like haha
In fact, in many common real-world scenarios, it is exceedingly annoying. I'll quickly outline my problem, which is likely a similar flavour to your problem and most others who share this frustration.
Personally, I have a laptop, a secondary laptop, a 2in1 (ie. Surface Pro clone), and iPad, and a cell phone which, ideally, I'd like to pair to my D90 III Sabre.
Laptop 1, iPad, and S22 all support BT5, and so LDAC. But Laptop 2 and 2in1 CPUs are 8250u and 8650u, and their WiFi adapters are period correct. Not a huge deal if pairing wasn't an issue, but with the pairing, and having to spend money and time configuring and reconfiguring LDAC on Windows machines specifically, it all starts to become a little too much. ESPECIALLY when the LDAC codec I tested for Laptop 1 with my best antenna supported an average bitrate of around (only) 425kbps.
425kbps? That's definitely not in lossless territory - the entire point...
It became enough to make me wonder: is there a better way to do this? A way that I don't have to disable bluetooth on every other device I don't want to connect to the DAC while I'm using it, even if I'm using those other devices too and they have another essential bluetooth device paired...
Well, at first I used Windows Wireless Display protocol, connected to a spare machine plugged into the DAC with USB, and set the wireless display as the audio device. That worked for the Laptop and 2in1. It worked great and sounded decent, but I wanted to do the same thing with the phone and iPad, but they don't have apps to support wireless display.
In time, I came across a free for personal use program called SpaceDesk - it allows you to connect wirelessly to and from any android, apple, or windows machine to others!
You run it on the Windows machines as a service, and you open the app on the device you want to be the slave, and it gives you a list of all machines running the SpaceDesk service on your local network. You just click on the IP address you want to be the master, and BAM, 17 milliseconds later (or so..), authentication! You enable or disable audio in the settings on the slave device, set the desired resolution to present to the host machine. The host machine sees the display as a connected device, you use the Windows Display manager page once connected. The audio device shows up in the Control Panel > Sound, in the Playback tab - just like a local USB device or PCI device!
The latency is low, dropouts are basically never. Video quality is great, my only gripe is you don't get to set the bit depth or sample rate, or even see it. And the documentation doesn't tell you. I do believe that whatever it is, is static and pretty high. It sounds about the same as the LDAC, re quality and latency is superior. No dropouts...
OK, so there's the outline of a very convenient, cross-platform way, of routing sound from multiple devices to multiple devices, at your whim, Bluetooth not required.
I'm sure someone will come across this and love it - I do.
But what I'd love more is something that does this, and lets you set the audio sample rate and bit depth. Even better would be if it was bit perfect!
If it doesn't exist, maybe AI will make it!
"Imagine an AI could make your program... straight from your thoughts! ... Think Base 55" lol.
Imagine all the new datacenters going up are for cats. What would that story look like haha
