Will Bluetooth audio quality improve?

[Vincent Kars]

According to https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/bluetooth-technology/le-audio/ the answer is yes.

 

[Vincent Kars]

Missed this one: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...low-complexity-communication-codec-lc3.10743/

 

[klaberte]

It certainly could, and we would not even need to buy updated receivers (headphones, speakers, etc.), nor do we have to wait for LC3.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-profiles-codecs-and-devices.8223/post-326303

 

[VintageFlanker]

According to this graph:

LC3 would be able to stream 345Kbps, so nothing new if we consider codecs like Aptx (330Kbps), Aptx-HD (576Kbps) or LDAC (990Kbps). In theory, tho: BT 5.0 was announced as supposed to be able to go up to 2Mbps... And we didn't see anything like that quite a few years after...

Then, it still Huawei, who announced fall 2019, it's BT-UHD proprietary codec. This one is supposed to stream up to 2,1Mbps. To my knowledge, no one has been able to check this claim in practice.

 

[mhardy6647]

I am sure BT sound quality will improve, in the fullness of time.
When it does, it will be really interesting to see what sort of products companies like Audioquest start to sell (i.e., to improve the performance and fidelity of the soniferous aether or whatever). Maybe they'll have products that locally reduce the cosmic microwave background to improve the blackness of the presentation of audio via BT.

https://xkcd.com/54/

 

[klaberte]

According to this graph:
View attachment 49907

LC3 would be able to stream 345Kbps, so nothing new if we consider codecs like Aptx (330Kbps), Aptx-HD (576Kbps) or LDAC (990Kbps). In theory, tho: BT 5.0 was announced as supposed to be able to go up to 2Mbps... And we didn't see anything like that quite a few years after...

Then, it still Huawei, who announced fall 2019, it's BT-UHD proprietary codec. This one is supposed to stream up to 2,1Mbps. To my knowledge, no one has been able to check this claim in practice.

My article discusses SBC vs newer codecs. My broad conclusions are:

1. SBC sounds very good (likely impossible for most to ABX vs the original) when you appropriately increase the bitrate. (My article discusses how to do this.)
2. It should be possible to get ROM developers (and possibly standard Android, with enough pressure from the Android community) to increase the bitrate of SBC to levels such that its performance makes the more modern codecs moot. At least for 2 channel stereo, 16 bit, 44.1 kHz source material. (Check the audio samples at the end of my article to test for yourself.)
3. If this occurred, it would likely work with many/most of the existing speakers, headsets, etc, as SBC is required in every Bluetooth A2DP device, and has been since the ratification of the A2DP spec in 2003. No need to buy the latest hardware just to get access to better sounding codecs. (To be clear, this still needs broad testing to confirm compatibility.)
4. SBC is open source and royalty-free, making the above claims easy to test. I hope to help people doing this testing, but do not have all of the skills likely needed, nor 100% of my time to donate. I hope others will volunteer to help.

 

[Soniclife]

SBC is open source and royalty-free, making the above claims easy to test.

If the world worked properly that would make this happen, but as no-one gets paid it's less likely to happen.

 

[nugget]

it will be really interesting to see what sort of products companies like Audioquest start to sell

I'm imagining personal faraday cage listening booths, but then I realized that those might actually make a measurable difference and have a scientific theory supporting their utility. So you're right, it will probably be magic RF-absorbing rocks or something like that instead.

 

[mhardy6647]

I'm imagining personal faraday cage listening booths, but then I realized that those might actually make a measurable difference and have a scientific theory supporting their utility. So you're right, it will probably be magic RF-absorbing rocks or something like that instead.

A cat's-whisker or germanium diode could be imaginatively packaged as an "RF-absorbing aether purifier".
Say... "we" may be on to something, here!

speaking of which -- y'all know about foxhole radios, yes?

https://www.edn.com/foxhole-radio/

I should probably apologize for the thread derail detour...

 

[Srossi]

According to this graph:
View attachment 49907

LC3 would be able to stream 345Kbps, so nothing new if we consider codecs like Aptx (330Kbps), Aptx-HD (576Kbps) or LDAC (990Kbps). In theory, tho: BT 5.0 was announced as supposed to be able to go up to 2Mbps... And we didn't see anything like that quite a few years after...

Then, it still Huawei, who announced fall 2019, it's BT-UHD proprietary codec. This one is supposed to stream up to 2,1Mbps. To my knowledge, no one has been able to check this claim in practice.

What is the y axis?

 

[Wes]

How does Bluetooth sound today?

It's lossy, right?

Is it worse than mp3, or ??

 

[klaberte]

How does Bluetooth sound today?

It's lossy, right?

Is it worse than mp3, or ??

Glad you asked! Yes, Bluetooth audio's default Codec, SBC, is lossy. You can decide for yourself:

Go to

https://btcodecs.valdikss.org.ru/sbc-encoder/

then upload your favorite track, switch Profile 3 to "None" (i.e. no codec, so the original audio) and compare to Profile 1. Profile 1 should default to the so called SBC high-quality, but change Profile 1 to Codec=SBC, Channel Mode=Joint Stereo, Subbands=8, Allocation Mode=Loudness, and Bitpool=53.

If you hear distortion on Profile 1, try increasing the Bitpool until you cannot. Or you can decrease the Bitpool until you perceive the distortion. Although not a valid double-blind test, it should give you some intuition about what bitrates SBC needs before you determine it to be free of distortion.

As to comparing SBC to mp3, as mp3 uses psychoaccoustics (and to less extend, so does SBC), it is not a simple quantitative comparison. soundexpert.org runs a bake-off for varying codecs at various bitrates. His results are based on volunteer human tests. In general, he finds that mp3 at 320 kbps is judged superior than SBC at 328 kbps. However, it is possible to increase the bitrate of SBC so as to be preferable to mp3 at 320 kbps.

 

[TiborG]

Glad you asked! Yes, Bluetooth audio's default Codec, SBC, is lossy. You can decide for yourself:

Go to

https://btcodecs.valdikss.org.ru/sbc-encoder/

then upload your favorite track, switch Profile 3 to "None" (i.e. no codec, so the original audio) and compare to Profile 1. Profile 1 should default to the so called SBC high-quality, but change Profile 1 to Codec=SBC, Channel Mode=Joint Stereo, Subbands=8, Allocation Mode=Loudness, and Bitpool=53.

If you hear distortion on Profile 1, try increasing the Bitpool until you cannot. Or you can decrease the Bitpool until you perceive the distortion. Although not a valid double-blind test, it should give you some intuition about what bitrates SBC needs before you determine it to be free of distortion.

As to comparing SBC to mp3, as mp3 uses psychoaccoustics (and to less extend, so does SBC), it is not a simple quantitative comparison. soundexpert.org runs a bake-off for varying codecs at various bitrates. His results are based on volunteer human tests. In general, he finds that mp3 at 320 kbps is judged superior than SBC at 328 kbps. However, it is possible to increase the bitrate of SBC so as to be preferable to mp3 at 320 kbps.

I finally took the time to install the Magisk module with a modified SBC codec set to 486 kbit / s on my Samsung Galaxy S6 with Lineage 17 - Android 10. I set up SBC in Developer Settings and turned off AptX-HD and paired with my Topping DX3 Pro. Audio player FiiO Music, Neutron and UAPP. I was switching between SBC and AptX-HD on my phone and I can't detect the difference in quality. Great !! I will test whether it will have an effect on my bluetooth cables with AptX.