4 ms·

There is no physical reason for signals to take that long to play in your earphones. Signals across the ocean take less time to transmit. I am so surprised tha

There is no physical reason for signals to take that long to play in your earphones. Signals across the ocean take less time to transmit. I am so surprised that a trillion dollar company cannot spare the resources to fund a replacement standard for Bluetooth. When clearly Bluetooth can't be fixed.

mattashii 2y ago
This might not be enough reason for the full extent of 160ms, but I'd imagine something like, from low to higher latency impact: - Digitized music needs a DAC, and this conversion takes non-zero time (few us) - Compressed data is frequently chunked, thus not realtime (few ms) - Data streams are buffered, because the channel (wireless) is quite lossy and may need multiple retransmissions. (few ms more)
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  > - Digitized music needs a DAC, and this conversion takes non-zero time (few us) Digital musical instruments exist who also need DACs and they produce near real time audio. > - Compressed data is frequently chunked, thus not realtime (few ms) This is a problem with the limited bandwidth of Bluetooth. If Bluetooth had more bandwidth, you wouldn't need to compress as much or at all. > - Data streams are buffered, because the channel (wireless) is quite lossy and may need multiple retransmissions. Again a problem with Bluetooth. You can play computer games over wifi with others across the world with less than 30ms of ping. If you have more bandwidth, you don't have to retransmit. You just use an error-correcting code.
  - Rohansi 2y ago
    I wouldn't fully blame Bluetooth. Part of the problem with streaming audio is how you tolerate lag. Playback requires a constant sample rate of audio but your network is not guaranteed to deliver data at a constant rate. Designs need to accommodate for this and one of the solutions is to have larger buffers to tolerate some network lag.
    - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
      For live music, as thread OP wants, you can simply switch to a different transmission mode with minimal buffer. It would then be up to the user to ensure direct line of sight between the receiver and transmitter, and do other things necessary to ensure good signal quality.
cadamsdotcom 2y ago
Active noise cancelation is undoubtedly a factor. You can't cancel noise in real time. Also, the market doesn't care about latency.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  The primary problem with Bluetooth is that you can't simultaneously transmit high quality audio and receive high quality audio. There isn't enough bandwidth to do this. Apple kinds of works around it by using the mic of a nearby device, but this is less than ideal. A new standard would fix this problem by increasing the bandwidth.

mattashii 2y ago

This might not be enough reason for the full extent of 160ms, but I'd imagine something like, from low to higher latency impact: - Digitized music needs a DAC, and this conversion takes non-zero time (few us) - Compressed data is frequently chunked, thus not realtime (few ms) - Data streams are buffered, because the channel (wireless) is quite lossy and may need multiple retransmissions. (few ms more)

abdullahkhalids 2y ago
> - Digitized music needs a DAC, and this conversion takes non-zero time (few us) Digital musical instruments exist who also need DACs and they produce near real time audio. > - Compressed data is frequently chunked, thus not realtime (few ms) This is a problem with the limited bandwidth of Bluetooth. If Bluetooth had more bandwidth, you wouldn't need to compress as much or at all. > - Data streams are buffered, because the channel (wireless) is quite lossy and may need multiple retransmissions. Again a problem with Bluetooth. You can play computer games over wifi with others across the world with less than 30ms of ping. If you have more bandwidth, you don't have to retransmit. You just use an error-correcting code.
- Rohansi 2y ago
  I wouldn't fully blame Bluetooth. Part of the problem with streaming audio is how you tolerate lag. Playback requires a constant sample rate of audio but your network is not guaranteed to deliver data at a constant rate. Designs need to accommodate for this and one of the solutions is to have larger buffers to tolerate some network lag.
  - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
    For live music, as thread OP wants, you can simply switch to a different transmission mode with minimal buffer. It would then be up to the user to ensure direct line of sight between the receiver and transmitter, and do other things necessary to ensure good signal quality.

cadamsdotcom 2y ago

Active noise cancelation is undoubtedly a factor. You can't cancel noise in real time. Also, the market doesn't care about latency.

abdullahkhalids 2y ago
The primary problem with Bluetooth is that you can't simultaneously transmit high quality audio and receive high quality audio. There isn't enough bandwidth to do this. Apple kinds of works around it by using the mic of a nearby device, but this is less than ideal. A new standard would fix this problem by increasing the bandwidth.