5 ms·

If this is accurate then Bluetooth continues to disappoint. Bluetooth reminds me a lot of the F-35: Designed to do everything, does none of it particularly wel

If this is accurate then Bluetooth continues to disappoint. Bluetooth reminds me a lot of the F-35: Designed to do everything, does none of it particularly well, hard to build/maintain, and frankly would have been better off as three or four competing standards that did their "thing" well and nothing else. Might be time to retire it, do a clean sheet audio-only standard, that is easy enough to implement/re-implement with actual tests for all the functionality.

selfhoster11 5y ago
> Bluetooth reminds me a lot of the F-35: Designed to do everything, does none of it particularly well, hard to build/maintain, and frankly would have been better off as three or four competing standards that did their "thing" well and nothing else. Hard disagree. Bluetooth has an important disadvantage, in that its quality is bad. But it's also got an important advantage: it works, at all. Basically anything made from early 00s onwards will be able to connect to a modern pair of Bluetooth headphones. Interop is the selling feature.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  That's true of 'classic' bluetooth, but not of LE. LE is legitimately good. Source: Implemented a couple of LE devices. There's no shared heritage between LE and Classic, just the branding in common.
  - oblio 5y ago
    What are the bandwidth and range for LE in practice?
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      2Mbits PHY as of 5.0, which in reality means ~175kB/sec across uplink and downlink - maximum. Range is very good, 100-300 feet in open conditions.
      - oblio 5y ago
        Interesting. I wonder if there's any way for them to increase the bandwidth 10x or so. It would increase the use cases a ton.
        arcticbull 5y ago
        I think we call it WiFi ;) but yes I agree, I expect to see incremental bandwidth improvements moving forward.
        oblio 5y ago
        I don't think there are many devices that can create ad-hoc connections between them using WiFI. Maybe they should, but are there many devices that can do this? I.e. I connect my Windows laptop to my Android phone directly through WiFI, in a very simple manner.
        arcticbull 5y ago
        btw I hope I didn’t come across snarky. I agree BLE would be better with more bandwidth, I think part of the reason Bluetooth is the F-35 of protocols is it tried to be everything to everyone and it’s a hard line to draw. IMO audio should be in the BLE camp but beyond audio I think wifi is a better fit. JMHO.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Oh yes, LE is a completely different can of worms (and a horrible one at that). I was referring to classic Bluetooth, since most LE headsets also support it as a connectivity mode.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  > Basically anything made from early 00s onwards will be able to connect to a modern pair of Bluetooth headphones. Interop is the selling feature. In theory, sure. But in practice? Not in my experience.
- toast0 5y ago
  > Basically anything made from early 00s onwards will be able to connect to a modern pair of Bluetooth headphones. Interop is the selling feature. Yeah, it can probably connect, but will it stay connected and will it reconnect without repairing later? Often not.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    I’m mainly using Sony and Jabra gears with iPhone, when I turn them on they reconnect, no issues, except some headsets tend to cut off when the virtual line defined by phone and headset runs below surface of my torso for more than couple inches long.
- Clampower 5y ago
  But it doesn’t. Switch doesn’t support it. PS4 doesn’t support it.
arcticbull 5y ago
I would have agreed with you prior to Bluetooth 4.0, the LE spec. LE is a cleanroom specification developed by Nokia and delivered wholesale to the Bluetooth SIG in 2010. It's much more limited in scope, limited in bandwidth and designed to fill a niche around low-power, low-bandwidth devices instead of F-35'ing with WiFi-type capabilities. It'll get faster in time - each new revision brings with it a faster PHY without compromising on power consumption. It's up to about 2Mbits/sec now, as of 5.0. It's not quite up to where it needs to be to support streaming high-fidelity lossless audio, but it'll be there shortly. It's the right tool for the job - for once - we just need to let it mature a bit. [edit] Double-checking how AirPods connect, but I'm almost confident it's analogous to LE Audio spec in 5.1
- Google234 5y ago
  But somehow Bluetooth 5.0 cant stream compressed duel channel audio while also sending back microphone audio...
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Yes, even the 5.0 LE PHY is 2Mbits/sec and I believe that's shared between upstream and downstream. We're talking a total of 175kB/sec, split up and down [1]. I doubt that's sufficient for what you're suggesting. [1] https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/exploring-bluetooth-5-how-fast-can-it-be/ https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/exploring-bluetooth-5-how-fas...
    - rasz 5y ago
      you misunderstood, he means devices switching from A2DP profile to HFS/HFP the second you want to use microphone
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        Ah, I see, thank you.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sremani 5y ago
Do not under-estimate the 'jack of all trades' value proposition. They usually win out in consumer or semi-pro circles.
- toomanybeersies 5y ago
  I thought the 3.5mm connector was the "jack of all trades"...
adolfojp 5y ago
Your F-35 criticisms are a meme that we repeated so much that we convinced ourselves that they were true. The F-35 is not one airplane. It's three. The fact that these airplanes share technology and components is a good thing. The claim that the F-35 is bad because it's a multi-role aircraft is unfounded. Multi role combat aircraft are the standard. Here's a partial list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multirole_combat_aircraft#Active https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multirole_combat_aircraft#Acti... The claim that the F-35 is inferior to single role aircraft like the F-22 is also unfounded. None of us knows the specifics about the two airplanes but we do know that the F-35 has superior weapon systems, durability, communications, and spatial awareness. There are planned upgrades to make the F-22 compatible with the max off boresight capability of the AIM-9X, with its future LOAL capabilities, and there are plans to coat it with more durable radar reflective "paint". The F-35 has all of those today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor#Upgrades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor#Up... But the most important proof that the F-35 is a good airplane is that there are so many customers lining up to buy it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II#Operators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
- Dah00n 5y ago
  >But the most important proof that the F-35 is a good airplane is that there are so many customers lining up to buy it. You lost me there in an otherwise fine comment. The reason is at least as much that the big bully in the schoolyard wants you to buy his product and most don't dare not to. In many countries that did buy it there have been complaints from the other bidders on the contract that the contact was made specifically so no one else could win so they couldn't even bid properly (and lots of evidence says they are absolutely correct in stating this). This doesn't happen if the product was as good as you claim. Then it would have just won fairly. Personally I haven't heard of a single fair win but I don't follow it that close.
  - adolfojp 5y ago
    The theory that allied countries purchased the F-35 because they were bullied by the USA into doing so doesn't fit the fact that allied countries refuse to purchase American airplanes all the time. France makes its own combat airplanes, some of which like the Mirage 2000 and the Rafale are in operation. Sweden chose to make the Gripen, the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy chose to make the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Japan, well that's a weaker argument because their native fighter is based on an American jet fighter.

selfhoster11 5y ago

> Bluetooth reminds me a lot of the F-35: Designed to do everything, does none of it particularly well, hard to build/maintain, and frankly would have been better off as three or four competing standards that did their "thing" well and nothing else. Hard disagree. Bluetooth has an important disadvantage, in that its quality is bad. But it's also got an important advantage: it works, at all. Basically anything made from early 00s onwards will be able to connect to a modern pair of Bluetooth headphones. Interop is the selling feature.

arcticbull 5y ago
That's true of 'classic' bluetooth, but not of LE. LE is legitimately good. Source: Implemented a couple of LE devices. There's no shared heritage between LE and Classic, just the branding in common.
- oblio 5y ago
  What are the bandwidth and range for LE in practice?
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    2Mbits PHY as of 5.0, which in reality means ~175kB/sec across uplink and downlink - maximum. Range is very good, 100-300 feet in open conditions.
    - oblio 5y ago
      Interesting. I wonder if there's any way for them to increase the bandwidth 10x or so. It would increase the use cases a ton.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        I think we call it WiFi ;) but yes I agree, I expect to see incremental bandwidth improvements moving forward.
        oblio 5y ago
        I don't think there are many devices that can create ad-hoc connections between them using WiFI. Maybe they should, but are there many devices that can do this? I.e. I connect my Windows laptop to my Android phone directly through WiFI, in a very simple manner.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        btw I hope I didn’t come across snarky. I agree BLE would be better with more bandwidth, I think part of the reason Bluetooth is the F-35 of protocols is it tried to be everything to everyone and it’s a hard line to draw. IMO audio should be in the BLE camp but beyond audio I think wifi is a better fit. JMHO.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Oh yes, LE is a completely different can of worms (and a horrible one at that). I was referring to classic Bluetooth, since most LE headsets also support it as a connectivity mode.
tomc1985 5y ago
> Basically anything made from early 00s onwards will be able to connect to a modern pair of Bluetooth headphones. Interop is the selling feature. In theory, sure. But in practice? Not in my experience.
toast0 5y ago
> Basically anything made from early 00s onwards will be able to connect to a modern pair of Bluetooth headphones. Interop is the selling feature. Yeah, it can probably connect, but will it stay connected and will it reconnect without repairing later? Often not.
- numpad0 5y ago
  I’m mainly using Sony and Jabra gears with iPhone, when I turn them on they reconnect, no issues, except some headsets tend to cut off when the virtual line defined by phone and headset runs below surface of my torso for more than couple inches long.
Clampower 5y ago
But it doesn’t. Switch doesn’t support it. PS4 doesn’t support it.

arcticbull 5y ago

I would have agreed with you prior to Bluetooth 4.0, the LE spec. LE is a cleanroom specification developed by Nokia and delivered wholesale to the Bluetooth SIG in 2010. It's much more limited in scope, limited in bandwidth and designed to fill a niche around low-power, low-bandwidth devices instead of F-35'ing with WiFi-type capabilities. It'll get faster in time - each new revision brings with it a faster PHY without compromising on power consumption. It's up to about 2Mbits/sec now, as of 5.0. It's not quite up to where it needs to be to support streaming high-fidelity lossless audio, but it'll be there shortly. It's the right tool for the job - for once - we just need to let it mature a bit. [edit] Double-checking how AirPods connect, but I'm almost confident it's analogous to LE Audio spec in 5.1

Google234 5y ago
But somehow Bluetooth 5.0 cant stream compressed duel channel audio while also sending back microphone audio...
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Yes, even the 5.0 LE PHY is 2Mbits/sec and I believe that's shared between upstream and downstream. We're talking a total of 175kB/sec, split up and down [1]. I doubt that's sufficient for what you're suggesting. [1] https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/exploring-bluetooth-5-how-fast-can-it-be/ https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/exploring-bluetooth-5-how-fas...
  - rasz 5y ago
    you misunderstood, he means devices switching from A2DP profile to HFS/HFP the second you want to use microphone
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Ah, I see, thank you.
- solarkraft 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sremani 5y ago

Do not under-estimate the 'jack of all trades' value proposition. They usually win out in consumer or semi-pro circles.

toomanybeersies 5y ago
I thought the 3.5mm connector was the "jack of all trades"...

adolfojp 5y ago

Your F-35 criticisms are a meme that we repeated so much that we convinced ourselves that they were true. The F-35 is not one airplane. It's three. The fact that these airplanes share technology and components is a good thing. The claim that the F-35 is bad because it's a multi-role aircraft is unfounded. Multi role combat aircraft are the standard. Here's a partial list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multirole_combat_aircraft#Active https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multirole_combat_aircraft#Acti... The claim that the F-35 is inferior to single role aircraft like the F-22 is also unfounded. None of us knows the specifics about the two airplanes but we do know that the F-35 has superior weapon systems, durability, communications, and spatial awareness. There are planned upgrades to make the F-22 compatible with the max off boresight capability of the AIM-9X, with its future LOAL capabilities, and there are plans to coat it with more durable radar reflective "paint". The F-35 has all of those today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor#Upgrades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor#Up... But the most important proof that the F-35 is a good airplane is that there are so many customers lining up to buy it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II#Operators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

Dah00n 5y ago
>But the most important proof that the F-35 is a good airplane is that there are so many customers lining up to buy it. You lost me there in an otherwise fine comment. The reason is at least as much that the big bully in the schoolyard wants you to buy his product and most don't dare not to. In many countries that did buy it there have been complaints from the other bidders on the contract that the contact was made specifically so no one else could win so they couldn't even bid properly (and lots of evidence says they are absolutely correct in stating this). This doesn't happen if the product was as good as you claim. Then it would have just won fairly. Personally I haven't heard of a single fair win but I don't follow it that close.
- adolfojp 5y ago
  The theory that allied countries purchased the F-35 because they were bullied by the USA into doing so doesn't fit the fact that allied countries refuse to purchase American airplanes all the time. France makes its own combat airplanes, some of which like the Mirage 2000 and the Rafale are in operation. Sweden chose to make the Gripen, the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy chose to make the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Japan, well that's a weaker argument because their native fighter is based on an American jet fighter.