I translate this as “Qualcomm admits Bluetooth is a shitty mistake and its time to move on”
Bluetooth still has its place in several instances. From what I can tell, this wifi protocol depends on you having a WiFi network mediate the connection, such as at your house or at a Cafe. Bluetooth is true ad hoc requiring no middleman.
Bluetooth struggles with bandwidth enough that it affects sound quality and latency, but that doesn’t mean it’s unusable. It also has enough range that I beats some other competing wireless protocols as well.
I’d love to see WiFi or a higher bandwidth option come out, and I’m hoping this is the beginning of that. They may have to resolve issues with channel conflicts and the need for network mediation. It would be awesome for gaming.
Currently, there are some alternatives, or bluetooth versions which work pretty well.
Often wireless gaming brands offer a usb dongle. That dongle often uses a proprietary protocol over 2.4ghz. And allow enough bandwidth for audio and mic. Some brand give more or less bandwidth to the mic, or have better compression, or bandwidth.
And currently, there is a fairly “new”, already here since bt 5.3 : LC3. It’s a very well optimised protocol which allows for about the same quality at lower bandwidth than other protocol. It also has lower latency. This protocol has started to be used by gaming brands, like Creative, in a usb dongle. Or even in standalone headphones. On the Creative headset, it would allow enough bandwidth for audio and mic without much compromise (like if it wad a proprietary dongle).
Obviously the quality may not be as good as wired. But it should be enough for most people.
Huawei also seems to have announced (not sure if yet released, it should be in an honor phone), their bluetooth competitor. They say 6x faster (more bandwidth I guess) https://newatlas.com/mobile-technology/nearlink-wireless-huawei/.
Figuring out how to login to the wifi for you earbuds sounds like a fun time
That’s a solved problem. You use an app for setup, like so many other screenless devices.
It’s addressed in the article. It’ll just share the credentials from your phone.
That’s unfortunate. Devices like that are basically impossible to use on certain enterprise networks (e.g. college campuses). There really needs to be an override
I’m personally more worried about SECURING the network between my headphones and my phones …
Yet another vector of attack … let’s hope they use a modern encryption standard and that they update in a timely manner when a 0D on the protocol is found
but it’s Qualcomm, it will be fine, right? right? … guys? Right?
24 bit / 96kHz playback over WiFi is going to be huge.
Whats the point of 96kHz(playback)? You basically only produce sounds outside of the human hearing with that.
No point really. The Nyquist sampling theorem says that 44.1kHz is overkill, much less 48kHz or anything beyond. You only need twice the sample rate of the highest frequency to be reproduced, and human hearing generally goes up to 20kHz (less for almost all adults). Accordingly, many production recording equipment won’t even bother with frequencies approaching 20kHz. The only conceivable point is that you don’t need to resample files in higher sample rates, which saves you a tiny bit of cpu time I guess.
Dynamic processors (e.g. compressors, limiters, peak detectiors) are more accurate at higher sample rates (and bit depth). Also, less latency at higher frequency. Lastly, it greatly improves editing including “modern” processing such as time streching, pitch correction etc. I am not sure what the effects on “spatialization” are …
👑
KEEP CALM
and
USE LDAC
Surprised we haven’t ditched bluetooth for something like this earlier
