at high signal strength LDAC should default to 990kbps… which is kind of ridiculous since it’s so high it’s higher than some lossless codecs, like uncompressed 16-bit 48kHz. (which is higher than standard CD quality)
That’s assuming raw PCM data, no compression (lossy or lossless) whatsoever.
LDAC can do lossless redbook audio (16 bit 44.1 KHz) at 990kbps. All other modes are lossy.
It’s probably doing something much like FLAC- lossy encoder + residual corrections to ensure you get the original waveform back out, but with less bandwidth than raw PCM.
Uncompressed 16 bit 48KHz stereo is 1536 kbps, which is just slightly higher than what bluetooth 5 is capable of.
The bitrate is manually enforceable on Linux, too
*specifically using PipeWire