Qualcomm adds Bluetooth Lossless Audio Technology to Snapdragon Sound

[Paul2]

Qualcomm Technologies International, Ltd. today continued to demonstrate its vision and leadership in the wireless audio space with the introduction of Qualcomm® aptX™ Lossless audio technology to its already extensive audio portfolio. aptX Lossless is a new capability of the proven aptX Adaptive technology and a new feature of Snapdragon Sound™ Technology that is designed to deliver CD quality 16-bit 44.1kHz lossless audio quality over Bluetooth® wireless technology. Qualcomm Technologies has taken a systems level approach and optimized a number of core wireless connectivity and audio technologies, including aptX Adaptive, which work together to auto detect and scale-up and are designed to deliver CD lossless audio when a user is listening to a lossless music file and the RF conditions are suitable.

“At Qualcomm Technologies we’re excited about the future of sound, and we’re continually looking for ways to help our customers deliver new and exciting listening experiences. Lossless audio means mathematically bit-for-bit exact, with no loss of the audio file and up to now the necessary bit rate to deliver this over Bluetooth has not been available. With many leading music streaming services now offering extensive lossless music libraries, and consumer demand for lossless audio growing, we’re pleased to announce this new support for CD lossless audio streaming for Bluetooth earbuds and headsets which we plan to make available to customers later this year,” said James Chapman, vice president and general manager, Qualcomm Technologies International, Ltd.

To help deliver CD lossless audio quality reliably over Bluetooth wireless technology, aptX Adaptive works in conjunction with Qualcomm Bluetooth High Speed Link technology to help deliver the required sustainable data throughput. Designed to work seamlessly together, these technologies deliver rates beyond 1Mbit/s yet smoothly scale down to 140kbits/s in congested RF environments to minimize any audio dropouts or glitches for a consistent and reliable listening experience.

“Sound quality is the most critical purchase driver across all audio devices according to our 2021 State of Sound survey, which also shows increasing demand for higher quality streaming audio. Over half of respondents are seeking either lossless or high-resolution audio quality, and a massive 64% saying that lossless audio quality is likely to influence their decision to purchase wireless earbuds,” Chapman continued. “Currently lossless audio is only supported on client devices such as phones, PCs and tablets. By supporting lossless audio on next-gen earbuds and headphones, we’re providing our customers another way to deliver sound the way the artist intended, as well as a significant opportunity to differentiate and be among the first to develop products with this feature.”

aptX Lossless features & specifications:

• Supports 44.1kHz, 16-bit CD lossless audio quality
  Designed to scale-up to CD lossless audio based on Bluetooth link quality
  User can select between CD lossless audio 44.1kHz and 24-bit 96kHz lossy
  Auto-detects to enable CD lossless audio when the source is lossless audio
  Mathematically bit-for-bit exact
  Bit-rate – ~1Mbps

https://cdrinfo.com/d7/content/qualcomm-adds-bluetooth-lossless-audio-technology-snapdragon-sound

sounds good.  that means in the nearby future one can buy bluetooth headphones or earbuds with this lossless audio supported and can listen in lossless quality which is bit by bit uncompressed cd quality audio sound there and convert to lossy codec audio when the signal is weak or something like that.  cool.

[Titan]

Interesting. I always thought it was CD quality through BlueTooth. Then again, I never really paid attention lol.

[Paul2]

yeah.  over 2 years ago, around mid 2019, probably on around may 2019, my middle brother introduced me to his blue tooth headphones and when i first used it, i was hooked.  its better than wired headphone that i don't get wire touching my body where it was connected to my smartphone in my pocket.

with bluetooth wireless headphones, there are no wires going through from where my ears are to my pant's pocket.  so anyway, if i remember correctly, not long afterward, i checked out about bluetooth specs online, either that or i did read a little bit about blue tooth technology years prior where is said blue tooth data rate is like 300 kbps to around 400 kbps.  maybe its 400ish kbps and so that means it can't playback uncompressed cd audio quality sound since uncompressed cd audio quality bitrate is 1.4112 mbps or 1,411.2 kbps.  it needs like 4 times that bitrate to playback uncompressed cd quality audio.

so that means if you playback uncompressed cd quality which is again 1.4112 mbps via bluetooth, it will compressed it down probably lower than 400 kbps in lossy quality before the transfer.  maybe 256 kbps is my guess.  if that is the case, then about 5.5 times of data has been compressed out in lossy quality.  5.5 times of lossy compression is still consider mild compression.  that means most listeners might not notice much of a difference compare to uncompressed or lossless compression for that matters since the compression is quite mild.

not long after that, maybe a year later or so (it could be months later for all i remember), i happened to read that newer bluetooth chipsets can support up to 1.536 mbps but the range has been cut down 4 folds.  older bluetooth versions can transfer data up to 10 meters away in distance between two blue tooth devices which is 33 ft apart.  while newer blue tooth supports transfer speed of 1.5 mbps or 1,536 kbps which is about 4 times more than older version but the range has been cut down to about 4 times which is like 2.5 meters or about 8 feet apart.  i could be wrong though since i don't really remember that well of what i read about the newer blue tooth chipsets versions.

so anyway, 1.536 mbps should be enough to transfer 1.4112 mbps of data via bluetooth and even better, lossless codec like flac should on average compressed it down to about 1 mbps for audio and decode it back to 100% uncompressed audio.

a few days ago after i happened to read your reply to this post, i got curious and googled bluetooth and went to wikipedia link and read somewhat more about it and it said newer bluetooth can supports up to 2 mbps for the low power consumption or something like that which is cool, a bit better than 1.536 mbps.  i also skimped through the part where it said the difference between blue tooth and wi-fi and i got confused of what its talking about if i remember correctly so i jus skimped through it but i guess blue tooth consumes less energy hence why the data rate is low while wi-fi can send data much higher than blue tooth but consumes more power i think.

i also read that blue tooth can send data higher than 2 mbps but it also consumes more power i think.  just how much higher i don't remember but i don't feel like looking it up.  kind of lazy and tired now.  recently, when i forgot my blue tooth headphones in my middle brother's car, i just used a wired headphone to listen to musics on my smartphone when i went outside for a walk, i can kind of hear that the sound quality via uncompressed connection on my wired headphone sounds a bit crisper than my blue tooth headphones.  all three of my wired, wireless headphones, and my smartphone are cheap though so the dac on my smartphone for the wired headphone is about as good as the dac done in the wireless bluetooth headphone.  except the big difference is the sound is being process in uncompressed quality via analog wired headphone plug.

sorry for this long story.  i am bored and just wanted to share of what i know even though my knowledge is not that much.

oh yeah, one last thing, since blue tooth consumes less power that means blue tooth headphones batteries should last a long time before it runs out.  no wonder my blue tooth headphones can last as much as 30 hours of playback like it claimed before it needs a recharge.