9 ms·

You should remove "Mac" from your article, sans to where you first found this issue out and what the Apple-specific nomenclature is. This is simply a Bluetooth

You should remove "Mac" from your article, sans to where you first found this issue out and what the Apple-specific nomenclature is. This is simply a Bluetooth issue and why Bluetooth is bad if you care about audio quality.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lxgr 3y ago
For music, that's just not true. AAC is widely supported and sounds transparent to me; I'm not sure if I could detect SBC at high bitrates either. For voice/HFP, I agree, and LC3 can't arrive soon enough. I'm actually really surprised Apple doesn't use anything proprietary/better than mSBC for their AirPods.
- Kirby64 3y ago
  I suspect the GP meant for voice. It’s just atrocious no matter what for any device, due to the HFP restriction.
  - dgrcode 3y ago
    Yes, with the A2DP profile (high quality music) things work good enough for me not to notice. Maybe you could hear some differences on a side to side comparison, but it's good enough. The real problem comes with the HFP profile. Lack of decent codecs, and bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth make it really hard to solve. Not to mention the vast majority of devices you own can't upgrade codecs, or just won't because there aren't incentives.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      Opus provides excellent voice quality at 10 kbps (less than 1/6th of what PCM uses at 8 kHz), at a latency of 26.5 ms, so it's definitely not a technical problem for HFP either. There's always the risk of unknown patent claims, but the same is true for any other codec not older than 15 or so years.
      - dgrcode 3y ago
        I actually didn't know about Opus, but having read a bit about it, how aren't we using that codec for all things audio? It's open source, has good platform support, quality seems to similar to AAC, it could be used for HPF. What's stopping the adoption of Opus in Bluetooth standards?
        lxgr 3y ago
        Supposedly Google's Pixel Buds support it! I can only suspect why it's still so rare, but my guess would be either a fear of unknown patent claims, a lack of readily available hardware implementations, or a combination of both.
        dgrcode 3y ago
        I have the pixel buds A-series, and using my pixel 7a I can feel the quality going down when on a call. It might be just the latest buds, or my pixel 7a not supporting the codec, or the HFP not being set to use it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ho_schi 3y ago
It is a general issue of Bluetooth. And the solution are improved codecs for HFP. Seems like people are skeptical if BLE Audio and L3C can make a big change. Let us see. Ah hear. Pipewire seems to support it already on Linux.
- dgrcode 3y ago
  I agree improved codecs is one of the solutions. I think other solutions could appear if Bluetooth wasn't restricted to a 3Mbps bandwidth, which seems to me –I have no information on this– it's a very outdated constraint. I mean, 4G has existed for over a decade and it supports 100Mbps bandwidths. With that bandwidth it could use uncompressed audio and support stereo for both output and input. Regarding LC3, I've read people complain that it forces the Bluetooth Low Energy, removing a few features like multi-point connection and a few others.
  - summm 3y ago
    Isn't it possible to use LC3 over Bluetooth Classic HFP? And isn't LE audio advertised as flexibly supporting multiple streams, much better than Classic? That means, it's just bad implementations, not a principal limitation? Apparently some phones and headphones support it now, but oddly enough there is absolutely no information to find about the specific level of support.
andrelaszlo 3y ago
From my own experience, and from what I got from the article, the lower quality full duplex BT is only part of the problem. The major issue is that the mode is selected automatically on macOS. I never had this problem with Pulseaudio and Blueman, for example. The microphone isn't even registered until I manually change modes for the connection. Another annoying thing is that the mac is so aggressive when connecting to devices over BT. I regularly have to restart stuff because my mac hijacked the connection. It seems to do it even when the lid is closed.
DeathArrow 3y ago
Not really. I have decent quality when connecting my headphones to my phone or Windows laptop. It's just my Apple laptop that suffers. And if you read the article, it is an Apple problem since macOs chooses the wrong bluetooth profile.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lxgr 3y ago

For music, that's just not true. AAC is widely supported and sounds transparent to me; I'm not sure if I could detect SBC at high bitrates either. For voice/HFP, I agree, and LC3 can't arrive soon enough. I'm actually really surprised Apple doesn't use anything proprietary/better than mSBC for their AirPods.

Kirby64 3y ago
I suspect the GP meant for voice. It’s just atrocious no matter what for any device, due to the HFP restriction.
- dgrcode 3y ago
  Yes, with the A2DP profile (high quality music) things work good enough for me not to notice. Maybe you could hear some differences on a side to side comparison, but it's good enough. The real problem comes with the HFP profile. Lack of decent codecs, and bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth make it really hard to solve. Not to mention the vast majority of devices you own can't upgrade codecs, or just won't because there aren't incentives.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    Opus provides excellent voice quality at 10 kbps (less than 1/6th of what PCM uses at 8 kHz), at a latency of 26.5 ms, so it's definitely not a technical problem for HFP either. There's always the risk of unknown patent claims, but the same is true for any other codec not older than 15 or so years.
    - dgrcode 3y ago
      I actually didn't know about Opus, but having read a bit about it, how aren't we using that codec for all things audio? It's open source, has good platform support, quality seems to similar to AAC, it could be used for HPF. What's stopping the adoption of Opus in Bluetooth standards?
      - lxgr 3y ago
        Supposedly Google's Pixel Buds support it! I can only suspect why it's still so rare, but my guess would be either a fear of unknown patent claims, a lack of readily available hardware implementations, or a combination of both.
        dgrcode 3y ago
        I have the pixel buds A-series, and using my pixel 7a I can feel the quality going down when on a call. It might be just the latest buds, or my pixel 7a not supporting the codec, or the HFP not being set to use it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ho_schi 3y ago

It is a general issue of Bluetooth. And the solution are improved codecs for HFP. Seems like people are skeptical if BLE Audio and L3C can make a big change. Let us see. Ah hear. Pipewire seems to support it already on Linux.

dgrcode 3y ago
I agree improved codecs is one of the solutions. I think other solutions could appear if Bluetooth wasn't restricted to a 3Mbps bandwidth, which seems to me –I have no information on this– it's a very outdated constraint. I mean, 4G has existed for over a decade and it supports 100Mbps bandwidths. With that bandwidth it could use uncompressed audio and support stereo for both output and input. Regarding LC3, I've read people complain that it forces the Bluetooth Low Energy, removing a few features like multi-point connection and a few others.
- summm 3y ago
  Isn't it possible to use LC3 over Bluetooth Classic HFP? And isn't LE audio advertised as flexibly supporting multiple streams, much better than Classic? That means, it's just bad implementations, not a principal limitation? Apparently some phones and headphones support it now, but oddly enough there is absolutely no information to find about the specific level of support.

andrelaszlo 3y ago

From my own experience, and from what I got from the article, the lower quality full duplex BT is only part of the problem. The major issue is that the mode is selected automatically on macOS. I never had this problem with Pulseaudio and Blueman, for example. The microphone isn't even registered until I manually change modes for the connection. Another annoying thing is that the mac is so aggressive when connecting to devices over BT. I regularly have to restart stuff because my mac hijacked the connection. It seems to do it even when the lid is closed.

DeathArrow 3y ago

Not really. I have decent quality when connecting my headphones to my phone or Windows laptop. It's just my Apple laptop that suffers. And if you read the article, it is an Apple problem since macOs chooses the wrong bluetooth profile.