For context, LDAC is one of the few wireless audio codecs stamped Hi-Res by the Japan Audio Society and its encoder is open source since Android 8, so you can see just how long Windows is sleeping on this. I’m excited about the incoming next gen called LC3plus, my next pair is definitely gonna have that.
For context, LDAC is one of the few wireless audio codecs stamped Hi-Res by the Japan Audio Society and its encoder is open source since Android 8
LDAC is great, but simply stating that the encoder is “open source” is quite misleading (while technically correct). The codec is owned by Sony and heavily licensed. It’s a savvy business move of Sony to make the encoder free to use though, so everyone else can support their standard while charging manufacturers who want to integrate it into their headphones.
If we want a really free and open high quality codec, we should push for opus support via bluetooth
Yes… I made double sure to mention ‘encoder’ between that.
Xiph really won the lossy codec scene with Opus and I transcoded all my junk to that format. Hitting (my personal) transparency on 128k vbr is flat out impressive and it warms my heart that corpos won’t have a reason to collect taxes for basic things like audio codec. However it’s a different story with bluetooth audio codec in which I hope will change.
Because 75MB an album is better than 400MB when you’re trying to pack them on a mobile device. Flac is for archival.
Xiph really won the lossy codec scene with Opus and I transcoded all my junk to that format. Hitting (my personal) transparency on 128k vbr is flat out impressive
Same here. I’ve left myself a bit of a safety margin at 144k vbr, but having my whole library at transparent quality AND portable size is very convenient.
Though, now that opus 1.4 is out I feel a bit of anxiety whether i should re-encode everything from flac->opus1.4
Which tool do you use to re-encode everything to opus ?
I tried with ffmpeg and it works but I had many issues with covers.
If we want a really free and open high quality codec, we should push for opus support via bluetooth
Isn’t the new default codec in BLE Audio LC3 free and open and high quality? And it’s required for BLE Audio support, so there will be more and more devices that support it.
LC3plus isn’t really HiFi. It’s designed to be low-complexity & low energy: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,122575.0.html
LC3Plus is more then sufficient for transparent audio at the typical rates you will achieve with bluetooth, 160k is really low and you can normally sustain around 300-600kbps which is more then sufficient for LC3Plus. this test is IMO flawed for the intents and purposes for bluetooth audio
EDIT: LC3Plus caps at 512kbps, I cant remeber if that is before or after FEC (forwards error correction, not to be mistaken with PLC, Packet Loss concealment, FEC is kinda like raid, PLC hides dropped data)