6 ms·

Why the hell opus still not in Bluetooth? Well i know - sweet sweet license fees (aKKtually, there IS opus codec, supported by pixel phones - google made it fo

Why the hell opus still not in Bluetooth? Well i know - sweet sweet license fees (aKKtually, there IS opus codec, supported by pixel phones - google made it for VR/AR stuff. No one uses it, there are about ~1 headphone with opus support )

lxgr 3y ago
As you already mention, it's already possible to use it. As for why hardware manufacturers don't actually use it, you can thank beautiful initiatives such as this: https://www.opuspool.com/ https://www.opuspool.com/ (previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33158475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33158475).
giantrobot 3y ago
The BT SIG moves kind of slow and there's a really long tail of devices. Until there's a chip with native Opus support (that's as cheap as ones with AAC etc) you wouldn't get Opus support even if it was in the spec. Realistically for most headphones people actually buy AAC (LC and HE) is more than good enough encoding quality for the audio the headphones can produce. Even if Opus was in the spec and Opus-supporting chips were common there would still be a hojillion Bluetooth devices in the wild that wouldn't support it. It would be cool to have Opus in A2DP but it would take a BT SIG member that was really in love with it to get it in the profile.
- out_of_protocol 3y ago
  They chose to make totally new inferior LC3 codec though. Also, on my system (Android phone + BTR5/BTR15 Bluetooth DAC + Sennheiser H600) all options sound realy crappy compared to plain old usb, everything else is the same. LDAC 990kbps is less crappy, by sheer brute force. I suspect it's not only codec but other co-factors as well (like mandatory DSP on phone side)
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    I've got AirPods and a Beats headset so they both support AAC and to my ear sound great. Keep in mind I went to a lot of concerts in my 20s without earplugs so my hearing isn't necessarily the greatest anymore. AFAIK Android's AAC quality isn't that great so aptX and LDAC are the only real high quality options for Android and headphones. It's a shame as a lot of streaming is actually AAC bitstreams and can be passed directly through to headphones with no intermediate lossy re-encode. Like I said though, to get Opus support in A2DP a BT SIG member would really have to be in love with it. Qualcomm and Sony have put forward aptX and LDAC respectively in order to get licensing money on decoders. Since no one is going to get Opus royalties there's not much incentive for anyone to push for its inclusion in A2DP.
  - maep 3y ago
    "Inferior" is relative. The main focus of LC3 was, as the name suggests, complexity. This is hearsay: Bluetooth SIG considered Opus but rejected it because it was computationally too expensive. This came out of the hearing aid group, where battery life and complexity are a major restriction. So when you compare codecs in this space, the metric you want to look at is quality vs. CPU cycles. In that regard LC3 outperforms many contemporary codecs. Regarding sound quality it's simply a matter of setting the appropriate bitrate. So if Opus is transparent at 150 kbps, and LC3 at 250 kbps thats totally acceptable if that gives you more battery life.
    - out_of_protocol 3y ago
      Regarding complexity, do you have any hard numbers? Can't find anything more than handwaving
      - giantrobot 3y ago
        You can check out Google's version which I assume is bundled in Android: https://github.com/google/liblc3 https://github.com/google/liblc3
      - maep 3y ago
        I remember seeing published numbers based on instrumented code, but could not find it. I did a quick test with the Google implementation (https://github.com/google/liblc3 https://github.com/google/liblc3) which is about 2x faster than Opus. To be honest, I expected a bigger difference, though it's just a superfical test. A few things that also might be of relevance why they picked one over the other: - suitability for DSPs - vendor buy-in - robustness - protocol/framing constraints - control
        out_of_protocol 3y ago
        Thanks for checking it, appreciated - Well, 2x is nothing to write home about. - DSP-compatibility probably considered but never surfaced as a reason, so hard to guess investigation results. + Pricing and availability of said DSP modules - Robustness - well, that's one of the primary features of opus, battle tested by WebRTC, WhatsApp etc. (including packet loss concealment (PLC), Bit-Rate Redundancy (LBRR) frames) - Algorithmic delay for opus is low, much lower than older BT codecs, so that definitely wasn't a deal breaker - Ability to make money out of standard is definitely important thing to have
dogma1138 3y ago
Opus isn’t patent free, and what’s worse it’s not particularly clear who owns what. The biggest patent pool is currently OpusPool but it’s not the only one. https://www.opuspool.com/ https://www.opuspool.com/
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  No codec (or any other technical development, really - edit: except for 20+ years old stuff, and only if you don't add any, even "obvious" improvements) is known patent free, or clear on "who owns what." Folks set up pools all the time, but somehow they never offer indemnification for completeness of the pool - because they can't. See https://en.kangxin.com/html/2/218/219/220/11565.html https://en.kangxin.com/html/2/218/219/220/11565.html for a few examples how the patent pool extortion scheme already went wrong in the past.
  - dogma1138 3y ago
    No one said that Opus is the only one suffering from licensing ambiguity, but comparing it to say AptX and its variants which do have a clear one stop shop for licensing (Qualcomm) it’s a much riskier venture especially when it comes to hardware.
    - tux3 3y ago
      Making a patent troll is just a matter of putting up a press release and a web page. I could claim to have a long list of patents against AptX. Anyone could. Of course I'm not willing to disclose the list of patents at this time, but customers looking to be extorted may contact me privately.
      - rockdoe 3y ago
        FhG and Dolby did eventually put up a list of patents you are licensing from them. It makes for some funny reading if you're familiar with the field. (This should not be construed as legal advice as to the validity of the pool)
      - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lxgr 3y ago

As you already mention, it's already possible to use it. As for why hardware manufacturers don't actually use it, you can thank beautiful initiatives such as this: https://www.opuspool.com/ https://www.opuspool.com/ (previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33158475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33158475).

giantrobot 3y ago

The BT SIG moves kind of slow and there's a really long tail of devices. Until there's a chip with native Opus support (that's as cheap as ones with AAC etc) you wouldn't get Opus support even if it was in the spec. Realistically for most headphones people actually buy AAC (LC and HE) is more than good enough encoding quality for the audio the headphones can produce. Even if Opus was in the spec and Opus-supporting chips were common there would still be a hojillion Bluetooth devices in the wild that wouldn't support it. It would be cool to have Opus in A2DP but it would take a BT SIG member that was really in love with it to get it in the profile.

out_of_protocol 3y ago
They chose to make totally new inferior LC3 codec though. Also, on my system (Android phone + BTR5/BTR15 Bluetooth DAC + Sennheiser H600) all options sound realy crappy compared to plain old usb, everything else is the same. LDAC 990kbps is less crappy, by sheer brute force. I suspect it's not only codec but other co-factors as well (like mandatory DSP on phone side)
- giantrobot 3y ago
  I've got AirPods and a Beats headset so they both support AAC and to my ear sound great. Keep in mind I went to a lot of concerts in my 20s without earplugs so my hearing isn't necessarily the greatest anymore. AFAIK Android's AAC quality isn't that great so aptX and LDAC are the only real high quality options for Android and headphones. It's a shame as a lot of streaming is actually AAC bitstreams and can be passed directly through to headphones with no intermediate lossy re-encode. Like I said though, to get Opus support in A2DP a BT SIG member would really have to be in love with it. Qualcomm and Sony have put forward aptX and LDAC respectively in order to get licensing money on decoders. Since no one is going to get Opus royalties there's not much incentive for anyone to push for its inclusion in A2DP.
- maep 3y ago
  "Inferior" is relative. The main focus of LC3 was, as the name suggests, complexity. This is hearsay: Bluetooth SIG considered Opus but rejected it because it was computationally too expensive. This came out of the hearing aid group, where battery life and complexity are a major restriction. So when you compare codecs in this space, the metric you want to look at is quality vs. CPU cycles. In that regard LC3 outperforms many contemporary codecs. Regarding sound quality it's simply a matter of setting the appropriate bitrate. So if Opus is transparent at 150 kbps, and LC3 at 250 kbps thats totally acceptable if that gives you more battery life.
  - out_of_protocol 3y ago
    Regarding complexity, do you have any hard numbers? Can't find anything more than handwaving
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      You can check out Google's version which I assume is bundled in Android: https://github.com/google/liblc3 https://github.com/google/liblc3
    - maep 3y ago
      I remember seeing published numbers based on instrumented code, but could not find it. I did a quick test with the Google implementation (https://github.com/google/liblc3 https://github.com/google/liblc3) which is about 2x faster than Opus. To be honest, I expected a bigger difference, though it's just a superfical test. A few things that also might be of relevance why they picked one over the other: - suitability for DSPs - vendor buy-in - robustness - protocol/framing constraints - control
      - out_of_protocol 3y ago
        Thanks for checking it, appreciated - Well, 2x is nothing to write home about. - DSP-compatibility probably considered but never surfaced as a reason, so hard to guess investigation results. + Pricing and availability of said DSP modules - Robustness - well, that's one of the primary features of opus, battle tested by WebRTC, WhatsApp etc. (including packet loss concealment (PLC), Bit-Rate Redundancy (LBRR) frames) - Algorithmic delay for opus is low, much lower than older BT codecs, so that definitely wasn't a deal breaker - Ability to make money out of standard is definitely important thing to have

dogma1138 3y ago

Opus isn’t patent free, and what’s worse it’s not particularly clear who owns what. The biggest patent pool is currently OpusPool but it’s not the only one. https://www.opuspool.com/ https://www.opuspool.com/

pgeorgi 3y ago
No codec (or any other technical development, really - edit: except for 20+ years old stuff, and only if you don't add any, even "obvious" improvements) is known patent free, or clear on "who owns what." Folks set up pools all the time, but somehow they never offer indemnification for completeness of the pool - because they can't. See https://en.kangxin.com/html/2/218/219/220/11565.html https://en.kangxin.com/html/2/218/219/220/11565.html for a few examples how the patent pool extortion scheme already went wrong in the past.
- dogma1138 3y ago
  No one said that Opus is the only one suffering from licensing ambiguity, but comparing it to say AptX and its variants which do have a clear one stop shop for licensing (Qualcomm) it’s a much riskier venture especially when it comes to hardware.
  - tux3 3y ago
    Making a patent troll is just a matter of putting up a press release and a web page. I could claim to have a long list of patents against AptX. Anyone could. Of course I'm not willing to disclose the list of patents at this time, but customers looking to be extorted may contact me privately.
    - rockdoe 3y ago
      FhG and Dolby did eventually put up a list of patents you are licensing from them. It makes for some funny reading if you're familiar with the field. (This should not be construed as legal advice as to the validity of the pool)
    - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]