With Bluetooth how relevant is the transmitter

[wijnands]

Probably a silly question but...
When using bluetooth how relevant is the transmitter? In other words if I use the same file and app on two different phones it should not matter since the headphone is where the conversion to actual moving air happens?
Or am I wrong?

 

[fieldcar]

Phones or media players decode an audio file, then encode it to the wireless audio format before sending it over Bluetooth. It should be near identical at this point. The variance between devices is processing power and bluetooth signal strength, and most of the audio codecs used over Bluetooth have an adaptive bitrate based on signal degradation. Many phones have hardware to help with encode and decode, which helps with latency and battery life. Unfortunately, some phones also have trouble maintaining good bitrates over whatever codec you decide to use. So the device may matter. When I use LDAC over my oneplus 7 pro with my earstudio ES100, I force it to 990kbps. I do get rare and occasional dropouts though.

A good read:
https://www.soundguys.com/understanding-bluetooth-codecs-15352/