What is the difference between 128k and 320k music? Part 3


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What is the difference between 128k and 320k music? Part 3

bit rate
bit rate

The sampling frequency is approximately the following depending on the type of use (k is the thousand bit symbol, 1khz=1000hz):

bit rate
bit rate

8khz – used for phones etc, is enough to record human voices.

22.05khz: transmission use frequency.

44.1kb: Audio CD.

48khz: used in DVD and digital TV.

96khz-192khz: used for DVD-Audio, Blu-ray HD, etc.

The common range of sample precision is 8 bits to 32 bits, with 16 bits generally used on CD.

Having said that, my friends are starting to get confused. It’s not the bitrate that determines the sound quality, so why is everyone saying that 320kb sound quality is better than 128kb?

【Audio Compression】

Well, in fact, the bit rate should be said to be another dimension, it is a compression of audio files.

Nowadays, most of the audio formats we use regularly are based on the original “WAV” file of the audio CD (44.1khz sample rate, 16bit sample precision, 2ch). The original recorded sound data is stored in a matrix, which is in PCM format, while WAV format is an encoding format developed by Microsoft. Its function is to reproduce the data in PCM format through encoding.

Since the data in WAV basically completely restores the PCM data, MP3, AAC and other lossless encoding formats are basically recompressed based on the WAV files. Therefore, we can simply think that WAV is the original audio format and other audio formats are compressed formats.

When it comes to compression, storage and transmission are inseparable. The purpose of compression is to improve storage and transmission. Therefore, before we talk about compression, we need to understand the basic units of computers.

We all know that the computer is a binary number system, and the files stored by the computer are made up of two numbers, 0 and 1. Therefore, the computer’s transmission is based on each number, and each number is called 1 ” bit”. For example, for an audio piece, its basic data is “0,1,1,1,0,1, 1 ,0”, and when transmitting, these numbers are transmitted one by one. The sampling precision mentioned above is this unit.

The storage unit of the computer is “byte (Byte)”. In the computer, 1 byte consists of 8 bits, that is, 8b(bit)=1B(Byte). In computer parlance, data storage is expressed in decimal and data transmission is expressed in binary, so 1KB=1024B=1024×8b. This is also part of the reason why the hard drive capacity we see does not match the actual capacity.

Go back and talk about audio compression, the bitrate of the audio is actually the compression ratio. So the bitrate really just defines the size of the file, but because under normal conditions the larger the file, the less data you lose, so the sound quality is relatively higher. However, the bit rate itself does not directly affect the quality of the file. For example, if we take a 128kb file as the source file, even if it is converted to a 320kb file, the sound quality will not be better than 128kb. .

 


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What is the difference between 128k and 320k music? Part 2

What is the difference between 128k and 320k music? Part 2

bit rate
bit rate

Bit rate, sample rate, lossless, MP3, FLAC, APE, 320kb, 192kb, 128kb, 44.1khz, CBR, VBR. Does this bunch of various names make you both familiar and unknown?

bit rate
bit rate

The higher the bitrate, the better the sound quality. Lossless music is the highest sound quality, right? So, let’s start with the sound collection.

【Audio composition】

Nowadays, when we talk about audio, everything is digital audio. Digital audio consists of three parts: sample rate, sample precision, and number of sound channels.

Sample Rate: Both the sample rate, which refers to the number of samples per second when recording the sound, expressed in Hertz (Hz).

Sampling Precision: Refers to the dynamic range of the recorded sound, measured in bits (Bit).

Sound channel: the number of channels (1-8).

 

In simple terms, we can think of a sound wave as a curve. We know that the curve is made up of points, and the sampling frequency is the number of points in the middle of the length per second (the horizontal axis of the figure above). Sampling precision is the number of points in the dynamic range (upper vertical axis). The finer the positioning of these two dimensions, the greater the true sound restoration and the better the sound quality. Of course, the larger the audio file will be. The customer mentioned by the previous colleague said that the latest Hi-Res Audio format released by SONY is a 6-channel 192kHz/24-bit recorded audio file. The size of the lossless format, of course, will be more than 200 megabytes.

What is the difference between 128k and 320k music?

What is the difference between 128k and 320k music?

Bit Rate
Bit Rate

I can’t fully understand music in words.show all

Bit Rate
Bit Rate

 

【Preface】

Some time ago, a colleague came across a very troubled client. The mess was said to have been caused by the client asking him to provide song files larger than 100MB-200MB in size. And my colleagues don’t know much about audio formats, so they started endlessly fumbling about FLAC, WAV and audio size. In the end, the colleague did not clearly explain to the customer what was going on.

After that, some other things happened that made me feel that in the music industry there are too many practitioners around me who have an extremely poor understanding of music and even lack some basic knowledge related to music. I don’t even have the idea to understand, which makes me very sad. It seems that music has only one merchandise attribute, and our practitioners only need to organize the shelves, encode various merchandise, and use the big data of users’ purchase records to recommend merchandise to users, no matter why to users. they like this. features that these products have, and use cold data to provide users with various services.

Therefore, I think it is necessary to write something. I don’t expect practitioners to become people who really love music. I just hope that even if you still think of “her” as a commodity, you can first figure out what you’re selling. and what is..

PS: The content of the first lesson is about media files. Since the relevant content involves a lot of technical issues, it seems a bit boring, but if you read it carefully, you will find that it is actually very easy to understand, but this basic knowledge can be very helpful.Improve your skill well. Also expect more interesting content about records, musical styles, etc. which I will post soon.

Related Audio Attribute Part 3

Related Audio Attribute Part 3

Sample Rate
Sample Rate

How samples are combined

Sample Rate
Sample Rate

This is mainly for two-channel or multi-channel audio. For a two-channel audio, it can be combined in the following two ways:

interleaved Taking stereo as an example, a stereo audio sample is obtained by interleaving the storage of two mono samples.
flat. The samples of each channel are stored separately.

The data after FFmpeg audio decoding is stored in the AVFrame structure.

In packed format, frame.data[0] or frame.extended_data[0] contains all the audio data.
In Planar format, frame.data[i] or frame.extended_data[i] represents the data of the i-th channel (assuming channel 0 is the first), the size of the AVFrame.data array is set to 8, if If the number of channels exceeds 8, you should get the channel data from frame.extended_data.

sample format
The sample formats in FFmpeg are mainly:

copy code
enum AVSampleFormat {
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_NONE = – 1 ,
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_U8, /// < 8 bits unsigned
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_S16, /// < 16 bits
signed AV_SAMPLE_FMT_S32, /// < 32 bits
signed AV_SAMPLE_FMT_FLT, /// < float
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_DBL, /// < double

AV_SAMPLE_FMT_U8P, /// < 8 bits unsigned, flat
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_S16P, /// < 16 bits signed, flat
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_S32P, /// < 32 bits signed, flat
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_FLTP, /// < float, flat
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_DBLP, /// < double, flat
AV_SAMPLE_FMT_S64, /// < 64 bits
signed AV_SAMPLE_FMT_S64P, /// < 64 bits signed, plain

AV_SAMPLE_FMT_NB /// < Number of sample formats DO NOT USE if dynamically linked
};
copy code
to illustrate:

1. U8 (8-bit unsigned integer), S16 (16-bit integer), S32 (32-bit integer), FLT (single-precision floating-point type), DBL (double-precision floating-point type), S64 (64-bit integer), those not ending with P are interleaved structures, and those ending with P are flat structures.
2. Flat mode is FFmpeg’s internal storage mode, and the audio files we use are in packed mode.
3. The FFmpeg audio sample format that decodes different output audio formats is not the same. The test found that the data output by AAC decoding is in floating point AV_SAMPLE_FMT_FLTP format, and the data output by MP3 decoding is in AV_SAMPLE_FMT_S16P format (the mp3 file used is 16-bit deep). For the specific sample format, you can see the format member in the decoded AVFrame or the sample_fmt member in the AVCodecContext of the decoder.

Bit rate
The transfer rate per second (bit rate, also called bitrate). Like 705.6kbps or 705600bps, where b is a bit, ps is per second (per second), which means a capacity of 705600bit per second. Compressed audio files are often represented at double speed, for example CD quality MP3 is 128kbps/44100HZ. Note that the unit here is bit instead of byte. One byte is equal to 8 bits (bits). The bit is the smallest unit. It is generally used to describe network speed and various communication speeds. The byte is used to calculate the size. hard drive and memory.

Mbps is: Millionbit per second (millions of bits per second);
Kbps is: Kilobit per second (kilobit per second);
bps is: bit per second (bit per second), the corresponding conversion ratio is:

1Millionbit=1000Kilobit=1000000bit; 1Mbps = 1000,000bps; Again, this is the unit of speed, which refers to the number of bits transmitted per second. The unit of measure for data transmission speed K is the decimal meaning, but the K for data storage is the binary meaning. E.g:

The 1M bandwidth generally described is 1 Mbps = 1,000,000 bps = 1,000,000 / 8 / 1,000 = 125; therefore, the download speed of 1M bandwidth generally does not exceed 125KB/s
. 1000 = 12.5, so the maximum download rate of 100M bandwidth can reach 12.5MB/s
. Of course, the above is only the theoretical rate. In fact, the maximum download rate may not reach that much, and it is mainly affected by various losses, generally 100MB A broadband download rate of 10MB is not bad.

Related Audio Attribute Part 2

Related Audio Attribute Part 2

Sampling
Sampling

 

The higher the sampling, the more realistic and natural the sound will be.

Sampling
Sampling

 

The frequency recognition range for people is 20 HZ – 20,000 HZ. If 20,000 samples per second can be sampled, it will be enough to satisfy the needs of the human ear during playback. So 22050 The sample rate is commonly used, 44100 is already CD quality, and sampling more than 48000 is no longer meaningful to the human ear. This is similar to a 24 frames per second image from a movie.

 

Sampling bits
After sampling the audio for a sample, two steps must be performed for the sample:

1. Quantify. The quantization bits commonly used for audio quantization are:

8 bits (that is, 1 byte) can only register 256 numbers, that is, only the amplitude can be divided into 256 levels;

16 bits (ie 2 bytes) can be as small as 65536 numbers, which is already the CD standard;

32 bits (ie 4 bytes) can subdivide the amplitude into 4294967296 levels, which is really unnecessary.

The number of quantization bits is also called the number of sampling bits, bit depth, and resolution, and refers to how many levels the continuous intensity of the sound can be divided after being digitally represented. N-bit means that the intensity of the sound is divided equally into 2^N levels. 16 bits, it is level 65535. This is a very large number and people may not be able to tell the difference in sound intensity from 1/65,535. You can also say that it is the resolution of the sound card. The higher the value, the higher the resolution and the greater the ability to produce sound. The sampling multiple here is primarily addressing the strength characteristics of the signal, and the sampling rate is addressing the time (frequency) characteristics of the signal, which are two different concepts.

2. Binary encoding. That is, the result of the quantization, ie the single channel sample, is stored in a binary keyword. There are two storage methods:

Store the result of the quantization directly in the cast, that is, the two’s complement code;

The result of quantization is stored in floating point type, ie floating point encoding code.

Most PCM sample data formats use integers to store, and for some applications that require high precision, use floating point to represent PCM sample data.

frame
After the audio is quantized to a binary codeword, it must be transformed and the transformation (MDCT) is done in block units, and a block is made up of multiple (120 or 128) samples. A frame will contain one or more blocks. Common frame sizes are 960, 1024, 2048, 4096, etc. A frame records a sound unit whose duration is the product of the sample duration and the number of channels. The nb_samples in the AVFrame structure in FFmpeg represent the number of single channel audio samples in a frame.

Related Audio Attribute

Related Audio Attribute

Sample Rate
Sample Rate

channel, sample rate, sample bits, sample format, bit rate

Sample Rate
Sample Rate

 

The PCM obtained from audio sampling contains three elements: channel, sample rate, and sample rate.

channel
When people hear the sound, they can locate the sound source. By setting the sound source to different positions, a better listening experience can be created. If the position of the audio is adjusted with the image, a better audio-visual experience will be obtained. Effect. Common channels are:

monkey monkey
Two channels, stereo, the most common type, including left and right channels
2.1 channels, adding a bass channel on the basis of two channels
5.1 channels, including one front channel, one front left channel, one front right channel, one surround left channel, one surround right channel, and one bass channel, first used in early theaters
7.1 channel, on the basis of 5.1 channel, the surround left and right channels are divided into surround left and right channels and rear left and right channels, mainly used in BD and modern theaters
Next is a two-channel audio system.

 

 

Sampling rate
Audio sampling is the conversion of sound from an analog signal to a digital signal. The sample rate is the number of times the sound is collected per second and is also the number of samples per second of the resulting digital signal. When sampling sound, common sample rates are:

8,000 Hz – telephone sampling rate, sufficient for human speech
11,025 Hz – sample rate for AM radio
22,050 Hz and 24,000 Hz – sample rate for FM radio
32,000 Hz – sampling for miniDV digital camcorder, DAT (LP mode)
44,100 Hz – Audio CD, also commonly used in MPEG-1 audio (VCD, SVCD, MP3) Sample rate 47 250
Hz – Sampling frequency
48,000 Hz for commercial PCM recorders – for miniDV, digital TV, DVD, DAT, movies, and pro audio Sampling rate 50,000 Hz for 2,000 – 96,000 or 192,000 Hz digital sound
for commercial digital sound recorders
– DVD-Audio, some LPCM DVD soundtracks, BD-ROM (Blu-ray Disc) and HD-DVD (High Definition DVD) soundtracks The sample rate used by the audio track
2.8224 MHz: The sample rate used by Direct Stream Digital’s 1-bit sigma-delta modulation process.

Audio over Bluetooth

Audio over Bluetooth: as detailed as possible about profiles, codecs and devices
Audio  over bluetooth

Due to the massive launch of smartphones without 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth wireless headphones have become the main way to listen to music and communicate in headphone mode for many.

Audio over bluetooth
Manufacturers of wireless devices do not always write detailed product specifications, and articles on Bluetooth audio on the Internet are contradictory, in some places incorrect, do not count all functions, and often copy the same information that does not correspond to reality.
Let’s try to understand the protocol, the capabilities of the Bluetooth operating system stacks, headphones and speakers, Bluetooth codecs for music and voice, find out what affects transmitted sound quality and latency, learn how to collect and decode information about supported codecs and other capabilities. Of the device.

Bluetooth music

The functional component of Bluetooth is defined by profiles: specific function specifications. Bluetooth music streaming is done using the A2DP high-quality one-way audio streaming profile. The A2DP standard was adopted in 2003 and has not changed dramatically since then.
Within the profile, 1 mandatory SBC codec of low computational complexity, created specifically for Bluetooth, and 3 additional ones are standardized. It is also allowed to use undocumented codecs of your own implementation.

Why do you need codecs at all, you wonder, when Bluetooth has EDR, which allows data transfer rates at 2 and 3 Mbps, and 1.4 Mbps is sufficient for uncompressed 2-channel 16-bit PCM?

Bluetooth data transmission

In Bluetooth, there are two types of data transfer: Asynchronous Connection Less (ACL) for asynchronous transfer without establishing a connection, and Synchronous Connection Oriented (SCO), for synchronous transfer with prior agreement of the connection.
Transmission is carried out using a time division scheme and the selection of the transmission channel for each packet separately (Frequency Hopping / Time Division-Duplex, FH / TDD), for which time is divided into slots of 625 microseconds called slots. One of the devices transmits in even slot numbers, the other in odd slots. The transmitted packet can occupy 1, 3 or 5 slots, depending on the size of the data and the type of transmission configured, in this case the transmission by a device is carried out in even and odd slots until the end of the transmission. In just one second, you can receive and send up to 1600 packets, if each of them occupies 1 slot, and both devices transmit and receive something without stopping.

2 and 3 Mbps for EDR, which can be found in the advertisements and on the Bluetooth website, are the maximum channel transmission rate of all data in total (including technical headers for all protocols in which they must be encapsulate the data) in two directions simultaneously. Actual data transfer rates will vary greatly.

To transfer music, an asynchronous method is used, almost always with the help of packets of the type 2-DH5 and 3-DH5, which carry the maximum amount of data in EDR mode of 2 Mbps and 3 Mbps, respectively, and occupy 5 time division slots.

Schematic representation of a transmission with 5 slots for one device and 1 slot for another (DH5 / DH1):
5 слотов на передачу, каждый из которых передаётся 625 микросекунд, и один слот на приём, тоже 625 микукро. В сумме – 3.75 миллисекунды.

Due to the principle of division of air in time, we have to wait a time interval of 625 microseconds after transmitting a packet if the second device does not transmit anything or a small packet, and a longer amount of time if the second device is transmitting in large packets. If more than one device is connected to the phone (for example, headphones, watches, and a fitness bracelet), the transfer time is shared among all.

Bluetooth playback on desktop computer.

Bluetooth playback on desktop computer.

Bluetooth

Recently, more and more wireless headsets and smartphones have been released without a 3.5mm jack, and the latter are getting more and more sophisticated Bluetooth codecs.

Bluetooth audio

However, desktop systems are much more conservative in this regard: here almost all devices are still equipped with a headphone jack, and the cable rarely interferes, therefore, with the transmission of sound via Bluethtooth, here everything is sadder.

However, the customization of a PC is much greater than that of smartphones, so if you bought great wireless headphones, don’t worry, you can also enjoy high-quality sound on the desktop operating system.

What are Bluetooth codecs?

First, a brief introduction to the theory. With wireless sound transmission, everything is more complicated than with a wired one: here you cannot just connect the cable and immediately get high-quality sound; this requires that both the headphones and the device support the desired codec.

Their complete list is quite impressive:
SBC is the basic codec included in the A2DP standard, which is compatible with 99% of all BT devices released in the last 10 years, and absolutely all wireless headphones. Consequently, if you don’t want to understand, you can just buy any BT headset and connect it to your device; the music will be broadcast. It would seem, what is the problem then? And is that SBC is comparable in sound quality to mp3 with a bit rate of 128 kbps: that is, you can listen to podcasts or YouTube videos without any problem, but you can hardly enjoy the music. Therefore, in the last 10 years, more “cooler” codecs have been developed, which transmit sound better.

AptX is perhaps the most qualitative leap after SBC. And while its bit rates are comparable (~ 300 kbps), AptX squeezes sound less harshly, so music in plugs or inexpensive headphones will often sound even better than when the same headphones are connected with a cable to a smartphone. Unfortunately, on a PC, even with a built-in audio card, the sound through the cable can still be better, although you do need some pretty expensive headphones to tell the difference. Therefore, this codec can be considered a basic level – a sufficient number of users listening to music on streaming services in mp3 with bit rates of 250-320 kbps, such BT sound will suit.

AptX LL – Same AptX, but with low latency (low latency). If conventional wireless codecs have a delay of 100-200 ms, here it is below 40 ms, which is important in games. However, in reality, it all largely depends on both your device and the headphones: for example, personally, I do not feel the audio lag in AptX HD in games.
AptX HD is an improved version of AptX with a bit rate almost double (576 kbps). But this is still a lossy transmission of sound, although much less than in the case of previous codecs. As a result, if you listen to music on Spotify, Apple Music, and other services, the sound quality will be indistinguishable from cable or even better if you have high-quality headphones with a good DAC inside. But if you prefer lossless and, most likely, have special equipment to listen to it, unfortunately the cable here will still be noticeably better.

LDAC is Sony’s highest quality codec (available for free on Android 8.0 and above). It has three levels of bitrate: 330, 660 and 990 kbps. The former is similar in quality to AptX, so there is no point in considering it. The second works roughly at the level of Aptx HD. But the third, perhaps the most interesting: it is obvious that for music from streaming services this is excessive, but this is almost the only codec that allows you to transfer without loss with almost no loss of quality. However, problems are already emerging with the stability of transferring music with such a high bit rate; in other words, already behind a wall of the fountain, you will be haunted by the constant stuttering of sound.

LHDC is an analog of Huawei’s LDAC, it has a bit rate of 900 kbps, while only this company’s smartphones and some headphones support it. As a result, in terms of quality, it should work at the LDAC level, but in practice you most likely won’t find it anywhere.
AAC is the only high-quality codec supported by iPhone. Not having the highest bit rate of 256 kbit / s allows you to get quality sound somewhere between AptX and AptX HD due to this being the only psychoacoustic codec between them.

Reasons why Bluetooth can reduce sound quality

Reasons why Bluetooth can reduce sound quality

Bluetooth audio

While Bluetooth technology offers an easy way to listen to wireless audio through speakers and headphones, some people are opposed to Bluetooth because in terms of audio fidelity it is better to choose one of the Wi-Fi based wireless technologies such as AirPlay, DLNA , Play-Fi or Sonos. … While this understanding is generally correct, there is more to using Bluetooth than meets the eye.

audio Bluetooth

A little about Bluetooth technology

Bluetooth was not originally created for audio entertainment, but rather to connect speakerphone and phone headsets. It has also been designed with a very narrow bandwidth, which forces data compression to be applied to the audio signal. While this format may be ideal for phone calls, it is not ideal for playing music. Additionally, Bluetooth can apply this compression over existing data compression, such as digital audio files or sources streamed over the Internet.

Bluetooth 5.0 standard – a new level of wireless communication

But one important thing to keep in mind is that the Bluetooth system should not apply this additional compression. That’s why:

All Bluetooth devices must support low complexity subband encoding. However, Bluetooth devices can also support additional codecs, which can be found in the Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile specification. Additional codecs listed: MPEG 1 and 2 Audio, MPEG 3 and 4, ATRAC and aptX.

In fact, the familiar MP3 format is MPEG-1 Layer 3, so MP3 is included in the specification as an additional codec.

Additional Bluetooth codecs

The official Bluetooth standard in section 4.2.2 states: “The device can also support additional codecs to maximize usability. When both SRC and SNK support the same subcode, that codec can be used instead of the required codec. ”

In this document, SRC refers to the source device and SNK refers to the destination (or receiver) device. So the source would be your smartphone, tablet, or computer, and the receiver would be your bluetooth speaker, headset, or receiver.

By design, Bluetooth does not necessarily add additional data compression to material that is already compressed. If both the source and receiver devices support the codec used to encode the original audio signal, the audio can be transmitted and received without change. So if you are listening to MP3 or AAC files that you have saved on your smartphone, tablet, or computer, Bluetooth should not degrade the sound quality if both devices support this format.

This rule also applies to Internet radio and music streaming services that are encoded in MP3 or AAC format, which covers most of what is available today. However, some music services are experimenting with other formats, for example Spotify uses the Ogg Vorbis codec.

According to the Bluetooth SIG, the organization that licenses Bluetooth, compression remains the norm for now. This is mainly due to the fact that the phone has to transmit not only music, but also calls and other notifications related to calls. However, there is no reason why a manufacturer cannot switch from SBC compression to MP3 or AAC if it supports the Bluetooth receiver. This will apply compression to the notifications, but the original MP3 or AAC files will be transmitted without modification.

What about aptX

The quality of stereo sound transmitted via Bluetooth has improved over time. The current aptX codec, which is marketed as an upgrade to the mandatory SBC codec, provides CD-like audio quality via Bluetooth wireless technology.

Just remember that both your Bluetooth source and receiver need to support the aptX codec in order to benefit. However, if you are playing MP3 or AAC material, it is best if the manufacturer uses the proprietary format of the original audio file without additional transcoding via aptX or SBC.

Bluetooth 5.0: new power saving mode

Most Bluetooth audio devices are not made by companies whose employees wear their brand on their chest, but by an original design that you have never heard of. And the Bluetooth receiver used in the audio product was probably not made by ODM, but by another manufacturer. The more complex a digital product is and the more engineers work on it, the more likely it is that no one knows everything about what is actually going on inside the device. One format can easily be transcoded to another and you will never know, because hardly any Bluetooth receiver will tell you what the incoming format is.

WHAT IMPACT DOES BLUETOOTH HAVE ON THE AUDIO QUALITY?

Bluetooth Audio

A must-have brief on Bluetooth, from the basics to daily practice in audio land, was posted on HiFi.nl this summer. That raised a number of questions for readers, which, in short, are almost the same: “Great, that wireless connection, but what is left of the quality of the source file when you send audio over Bluetooth?”

Bluetooth Audio

We know that since the introduction of the current standard in the field of wireless connection, things have evolved considerably. While Bluetooth was never primarily intended to send or receive audio signals, but rather to allow hardware like the mouse and keyboard to communicate with each other, quite a few steps have been taken to exploit and enhance those capabilities. Consider Bluetooth version 4.0 and the arrival of the now-familiar aptX codec. However, the transfer is not (yet) loss-free. Is the quality of the source file sufficiently preserved with a wireless connection via Bluetooth? In other words, does it make sense to play FLAC instead of MP3, for example if you use Bluetooth to send the music to your speaker?

Codecs

The wired versus wireless discussion will likely always persist. After all, there are numerous hi-fi manufacturers that specialize in audio cables and tell a very good story about it (and besides, of course, there’s the good digital cable twist). When talking specifically about wireless audio over Bluetooth, there is always the element of compression. Due to the limited bandwidth of the connection, by definition there will be data compression and therefore loss of quality. (Not to mention, Bluetooth operates within the 2.4Ghz frequency that many other equipment in the house are also ‘connected’ to.)

aptX

The algorithm used also depends on the codecs supported by both the sender and the receiver. The only one that always works is low complexity subband encoding, or SBC. SBC is still used if, for example, the smartphone supports aptX, but the headphones do not; is the backup option. aptX, which has already done a lot to limit compromise, is certainly not the official standard and is still quite rare, regardless of the fact that there are so many different variants of su. What aptX also does exactly to ensure the ‘lossless CD quality’ of the connection is known only to the creator CSR and owner Qualcomm (you know, the American telecom giant), and their interpretation is, at best of the cases, vague. to name. In any case, the transport of audio data is still dependent on the bandwidth of the connection, which does not have the lossless qualities of transmission over optical cables, for example. The essence: With Bluetooth audio streaming, the audio stream is encoded with a lossy algorithm. After all, Bluetooth has insufficient bandwidth for lossless, let alone high resolution.

“It is always recommended to work with lossless FLAC or ALAC files”

Now what?

Well then there is loss of audio quality. And it’s no secret that hi-fi enthusiasts aren’t fans of compression. However, is the commitment so present that there is as much to horrify as with MP3? No, because thanks to innovations in the quality and bandwidth of a Bluetooth connection, much is being done to minimize the audible effect of compression, as this study shows between SBC, the younger aptX, and 320 mp3 Kbps. So the question is whether it can still be heard in an a / b test with, for example, optical cabling as an alternative. However, the main question is whether an a / b test with different source files via Bluetooth has any effect. The answer is really simple: do you prefer the loss of a good file or a less good file? After all: the better the source, given the (for the moment) inevitable but increasingly marginal loss of quality via Bluetooth, the better the end result. So it is always wise to work with lossless FLAC or ALAC files, because no matter what happens behind the scenes with Bluetooth streaming, you certainly won’t have to deal with double lossy compression, which is always a downside.

Finally, you have to put the Bluetooth app in perspective. After all, for many seasoned audiophiles, the above won’t be a discussion at all, for the simple reason that the listening room isn’t set up for an audio connection via Bluetooth (“Wired! Wired! “). Therefore, the use depends on the circumstances.