Ldac and aptx dongle for iphone

[ehabheikal]

I am not affiliated with it nor an iphone user but think this could be interesting for some iphone users who lag behind android bluetooth quality for a long time.

Finally, hi-res Bluetooth on your iPhone: this cheap, tiny dongle adds aptX Adaptive and LDAC to any USB-C device

From FiiO, our favorite budget audiophile brand

www.techradar.com

 

[staticV3]

Ironically, iPhone-encoded AAC usually performs on par with LDAC 990 and aptX Lossless (and better than Adaptive), despite drastically lower bitrate and hence higher stability: https://youtu.be/Nw0Erfi1VLw?t=453

So I can't help but think that that with this dongle, people will unknowingly pay extra for an inferior experience.

 

[abm0]

Huh, wow, it seems multiple sources agree on iPhone HW-encoded AAC @256 kbps being comparable to LDAC @909. I always thought it was known to be easily worse than aptX HD, not to mention LDAC.

Part II: Comparison of Bluetooth Fidelity - AAC encoder quality (Android 10 & 13, Windows 11, Apple iPhones & Mac)

A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.

archimago.blogspot.com

 

[ehabheikal]

Ironically, iPhone-encoded AAC usually performs on par with LDAC 990 and aptX Lossless (and better than Adaptive), despite drastically lower bitrate and hence higher stability: https://youtu.be/Nw0Erfi1VLw?t=453

So I can't help but think that that with this dongle, people will unknowingly pay extra for an inferior experience.

I do not disagree but why then has apple added lossless to its music service?

 

[abm0]

According to Darko Audio it's not clear when aptX Adaptive is giving you the privilege of its top quality = Lossless, and when it's stepping that down due to a bad connection. Then it makes sense for Apple to sell people an alternate lossless solution that they will know for sure is turned on and staying on. Not to mention aptX Lossless wouldn't work on iPhones anyway.

 

[staticV3]

I do not disagree but why then has apple added lossless to its music service?

To get more customers

 

[ZolaIII]

This all together is becoming a cross platform problem that is hard to solve. BLE LC as a part of BT from 5.3~5.4 revision is the latest try to put an end to it and we will see how that goes because on receiver side it's still pretty much almost empty pocket. Apple will still probably have to be enforced to come a long with it. Apple did AAC V2 H which is pretty good on mid bit rates (160~192 kb/s) but not really low latency not even on top end ASIC. OPUS is better in the lower mid tire (about 80) and about the same at 160 bit rates with very different philosophy back end implemented (it doesn't try to do or keep anything behind 20 K Hz) with low latency and now has a modern wrapper and multichannel support. There are other codec's that with optimised shaving (18~19 bit's) and in up to 20 KHz can keep up almost loseles in 1 mb/s and save discarded bits separately (to get back bit exact original) employing and general purchase compression. Like Optim Frog in hybrid form.
OPUS is more for general purpose streaming and Optim Frog as good carrier for online streaming by demand purposes. All parts of FFMPEG among other things.