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.
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.
Use opusenc directly. It preserves covers and the CLI is literally
opusenc --bitrate B INPUT OUTPUT.I use foobar2k via wine. Yes, you may stone me. Tip: You will save heaps of space by not embedding the cover on each file, just put a cover.jpg in the albums folder, virtually any player will pick it up.
Tip: You will save heaps of space by not embedding the cover on each file, just put a cover.jpg in the albums folder, virtually any player will pick it up.
Except when streaming the file or copying a random file to another location. embedded art is pretty convenient, 500x500 is plenty large enough and doesn’t take a lot of space (~50KB)
same as @denissimo@feddit.de I use foobar2000 + wine. ffmpeg is alright, but fb2k is very convenient (especially for replaygain tagging). Afterwards I usually give the files a Picard treatment to get proper tags + covers.
Ugh why would you transode if you value audio quality?
Because 75MB an album is better than 400MB when you’re trying to pack them on a mobile device. Flac is for archival.
Transcoding to a (for them) transparent lossy result is perfectly fine if all you do is listen. I couldn’t care less about “audio qualities” that I cannot hear.
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
LC3 is default and open, but not high quality LC3Plus is however it has a royalty (albiet very cheap)
PS. Opus Bluetooth is already supported for pipewire->pipewire BT. AAC-LC which is commonly used is fully open source now so thats a good option
Not anything to do with the LDAC codec but why does wireless headphones on windows suck. On linux (even a wm) I just turn on my headphones and it works, on windows every time I have to remove the device and add it back again
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What about wireless headphones that don’t use bluetooth? I think I had some Logitech ones that did not use bluetooth. Are those a viable alternative to bluetooth on linux?
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Bluetooth stacks are notorious for being gargantuan spaghetti code base. People have been trying to put out all those little fires because it’s more possible on Linux than Windows.
The standards are terribly complex and the reference implementations were originally written by the standards groups.
Then to keep compatibility everything has to be broken in the same way as the reference implementations which put more effort into “it works this time” than any kind of resilience.
I was trying to connect headphones on my partners Windows machine and it was a disaster. Most of the time it failed to pair, the rest of the time it paired but didn’t recognize as an audio device. We tried with 2 different devices and both worked perfectly on Linux and Android.
It’s the same for me. I thought it’s due to the motherboard I’m using, windows being the problem never crossed my mind. The only thing that worked well and didn’t have to be re-installed after a disconnect was the new xbox controller, so I feel like maybe there’s something fishy going on here.
Its windows, at which point wasn’t it fishy?
The only thing in my head is the time where people didn’t know it had backdoors and telemetry. I think Windows XP actually didn’t have backdoors but I just assume this rn.
Soundstack has layers of legacy, old, and almost new.
Huh, it works just fine for me. I have Samsung galaxy buds 2 pro. I don’t use it with my laptop often, but it’s seamless when I do.
Windows’ built-in bluetooth stack is famously bad. Try installing the Toshiba one instead. It’s a bit clunky UI-wise, but tends to have less issues.
Do you have any guidance on how to do on windows 11?
I’m still on 10 myself so I can’t say for sure. I remember I needed to go into device manager and disable but not uninstall the Microsoft stack, and stop it from automatically updating.
It’ll break the Bluetooth settings/control panel and you’ll need to re-pair all devices via the new icon in the system tray. It looks basically the same as the old one and both might be present, so I advise hiding the old one.
I also seem to recall having to change a setting relating to the pairing password. Maybe? Sorry it’s been a while since I got it set up and it’s worked flawlessly ever since so the details are a bit fuzzy.
I recommend you all to switch to Pipewire. Most bluethooth problems are fixed.
Most destros default to Pipewire, even Debian 12.
Isn’t that standard on most linux systems?
if your distro is not using Pipewire youre using a shitty one
I’m so confused, please don’t confused a new linux user it doesn’t help me
You can find out if you have pipewire or pulseaudio by using
pactl info | grep "Server Name"You lost me
I believe @twei meant, if you open a terminal and put in the following command:
pactl info | grep “Server Name” the output should tell you what sound server you are using.Pulseaudio used to be the standard audio server.Only recently pipewire has been taking its place.
Man, Anker makes the best price for performance headphones in my opinion. I have the Life 2 Neos and love the sound quality and battery life. They can take a beating too as I used to wear them doing blue collar work so they’ve taken a few nice hits and still work fine.
Fuck I sound like an ad.
Where the hell do you still buy Anker headphones? I’m in germany and holding on to my soundbuds flow because nothing else even comes close to comparison. I get Anker chargers and adapters and cables and whatever but nothing audio related to a point I thought they gave up on the whole branch.
They use the Soundcore branding currently for their audio products but it‘s the same company
Good to know. Might have to check them out then as my older Sonys die. Iirc DankPods “reviewed” some Soundcore headphones as an alternative to Raycons a while back.
Are they not on amazon there?
Just checked. They are and are all called “Soundcore by Anker so and so”
They are even shipping through Amazon even if bought through Anker/Soundcore website.
Micro center carries soundcore products. Where I bought my current P2-L headphones, couple years back.
No microcenter in Germany.
If you’re looking for a replacement for Soundbuds Flow (i.e. ~€20), you’ll be disappointed. For me, Soundbuds Flow were perfect for workouts. Cheap and I didn’t care too much about sound quality. Anker rebooted their audio line and focuses on mid-range to high-end products.
Yeah Soundcore buds and headphones are damn impressive for their price. The Liberty Pro 2s were my first TW earbuds, and I bought them after reading glowing reviews. I still have them as my backup earbuds.
I have their Soundcore Space A40, and the battery life is legitimately amazing. The case lasts me a week of heavy usage, and the buds easily go 6-10 hours depending on how heavily I use the ANC. If the buds get low, tossing them into the case charges them back up most of the way in 15-20 minutes.
The ANC isn’t perfect, but it’s made my recent flights way more tolerable by cutting out most of the noise from the engines while still letting the voice of my seatmate through.
Sony did drop the ball with LDAC quite quickly, it could’ve been the new standard.
But with the release of the WH-1000XM3s (or was it the 4s?) they basically made most of the selling points incompatible with LDAC, so now almost no one uses it anymore.
Yes, LDAC and multipoint do not mix hence I’m looking forward to LC3plus that replaces it. To be fair it’s not a big issue to roll back to AAC or even SBC to use multipoint, because you probably aren’t gonna notice a difference when you don’t listen to high res apps like Tidal. It also should be known that a good codec does not fix mediocre drivers and/or chips. Regardless, Linux shines in letting you use a feature you did pony up for. :)
AAC hurts my ears. Not sure why since I can’t hear a difference between it and LDAC without listening very carefully, but after half an hour or so I need to switch it to something else because it becomes more and more uncomfortable.
Switching between LDAC/multipoint mode means rebooting the headphones and connecting them again, so it’s a massive hassle. That makes multipoint absolutely useless to me. I personally won’t be buying sony headphones (or anything else that comes with an app) in the future because of that.
Aac has a higher frequency response and I think some decoders don’t filter transients as well with a fir filter. I’ve noticed this too.
LDAC and Multipoint do in fact mix, just not on Sony products.
I see, so Edifier and Soundcore shall do some homework as well: LDAC and multi point don’t work there either.
Have a look at Technics A800/AZ60/AZ60MK2/AZ80, all support simultaneous use of LDAC and multipoint. I recall something else working with both simultaneously too, possibly Huawei TWS.
They do step down a quality tier to do so, and low bitrste LDAC is generally considered poor, but it’s otherwise all there and possible.
I have a Radsone ES100 Bluetooth DAC/headphone amp, and that supports LDAC, multipoint, and doesn’t compromise the LDAC bitrate when you have multipoint enabled. You can even leave it plugged in as a USB DAC and still use multipoint BT with LDAC, and it switches smoothly between the sources depending on which device started playing a stream most recently.
I was distinctly underwhelmed by the BT implementation when I got my Sony XM4s, it’s kinda weak by comparison.
Nice one!
I am distinctly underwhelmed in general by the XM4.
Yeah, I agree.
I bought them for their noise cancelling primarily, and they’re excellent at that, but otherwise they’re not great. The un-EQed frequency response is terrible for headphones in their price range: flabby, wildly over-exaggerated bass and no mids at all. Running without EQ I can barely hear lyrics - every singer sounds like they’re mumbling underwater. I’ve had $20 IEMs with better tonal balance. They respond well to EQ but the on-board EQ doesn’t have enough frequency bands to even come close to fixing them. Wavelet on Android doing EQ duty makes them listenable. Even when you do EQ them properly, they still sound a bit dull and lifeless.
No idea how they got so much praise when they were launched. The power of marketing budgets I guess. For a while I was gaslighting myself thinking I had a faulty pair or maybe there was something going wrong with my hearing, but having heard another pair, and doing comparisons with my other headphones - most of which are far cheaper - I realised that no, they’re just not very good as headphones.
Oh LDAC conflicts with mutli-connection? That’s why I can’t get it on my 1000xm4?? It’s good to finally have an answer.
it was the wh-1000xm3. I own a pair and can confirm most features don’t work with ldac
LDAC never could have been the standard because it’s marketing crap, ctrl+f my name on this post and I have pointed out why multiple times
LDAC claims are completely bullshit.
LC3plus is worse than AAC quality wise (to be expected). Lower latency is the only thing going for it. And that’s just because AAC is a very high-latency codec. Opus (as a format) would win on both fronts, although there could be issues with creating a high-quality encoder for it that is not too complex, and power-efficient.
After testing LC3Plus, Opus, and AAC personally for bluetooth, LDAC claims are BS, but for the usecase for bluetooth, LC3Plus is more then sufficient, I don’t know why people keep quoting this post, under normal usecase, you get 3-6x the bitrate being tested, under which case all three codecs sound transparent with LC3Plus maybe dipping a little low. however latency is significantly better then AAC (tested against libfdk) and marginally better then opus
After testing LC3Plus, Opus, and AAC personally for bluetooth, LDAC claims are BS
How did you test Opus for bluetooth?
latency is significantly better then AAC (tested against libfdk) and marginally better then opus
In case you didn’t know, you can use 10ms (or even 5ms) frames with Opus instead of the default (20ms). 10ms should roughly match LC3plus’s default latency while still retaining high quality.
I actually prefer AptX HD but I wish my Android would default to it instead of LDAC
Why do you prefer AptX?
Side by side test with my headphones showed better speration of the range (including bass) and a more solid connection, especially while flying. Kept having LADC constantly try to bitrate switch on me, and when I set it on highest quality it kept cutting in and out at times. Sample size of 1 so YMMV.
The HD version is pretty good, lower bitrate, but solid quality and tolerance for distance.
Ldac if it’s an option, aptx HD otherwise.
Isn’t aptx majorly encumbered by copyright?
* patents and yes, I believe so? Just like LDAC. Although AptX is very old, so most of those might have expired by now.
LDAC is worse
Better latency, better reliability, and better quality under normal listening scenarios
You can typically change this in developer options.
Definitely. I have a pair of pixel buds that give me very noticeable latency when paired in Windows. I’ve never been able to find a way to use the low latency codecs to fix this.
In Linux it’s a complete opposite experience. I have a menu with every codec in the book, and I can actually watch video in Linux without even noticing any latency now.
Shame about headsets though - has anyone been able to get the mic to work without the audio quality dropping to trash? It is a shame to have to pick between good quality audio and the ability to use your mic.
It’s because all the good codecs (aptX, LDAC, even SBC) all operate over the A2DP Bluetooth profile, meaning your computer’s Bluetooth adapter is running in a particlar mode called A2DP. Unfortunately, A2DP is unidirectional, (ie, not Duplex) it doesn’t support sending audio to headphones and receiving audio from the mic at the same time, due to bandwidth limitations. So when you open Zoom or Teams or something that needs to access your mic, your Bluetooth adapter switches to a different mode like HSP (Handset Profile) and HFP (Hands Free Profile). These profiles do support duplex connection to the mic and headphones, but don’t have fancy high definition codecs. They are designed to be very low bitrate. That’s why you encounter such a big audio quality difference when it switches.
Note, having said that, pipewire on Linux does support some fancy duplex modes that operate outside the constraints of what I explained above. Eg, it gives me the option to enable AptX-LL with duplex, that passes the mic through using whatever little leftover bandwith is on the connection. This doesn’t work with heavier codecs like AptX-HD. I think Android does something similar, that is why you don’t notice the profile swapping behaviour as badly on Android.
I don’t think there are any hifi headset profiles, AFAIK.
I feel you there. Personally I just use the earbuds as output and the integrated laptop mic as input. Bluetooth really just doesn’t shine in that regard. However if you’re on Desktop and want everything to happen on a headset, not earbuds x wired stand mic, you should look into things like HyperX Cloud 2 Wireless that employ a USB dongle instead.
And it looks (for me) like on android it just works, so it should be possible… Or maybe it’s just seamlessly switching shit-quality with mic and good quality without? And I didn’t notice during gsm calls?
For sure it sucks on windows too, but well - anything bt-related on windows works just bad…
I think that might be the codecs’ fault. At least for me, my headphones sound terrible in headset mode on all the devices I’ve tried, regardless of whether they’re running Linux, MacOS, iOS, or Android.
It’s the profile, not the codec. The codec just defines how the audio is compressed, the profile defines all the parameters around that like duplex for microphones.
A2DP is the profile used for music by everything, HFP is the profile that is used for calling by most things nowadays.
TIL! Thanks for the clarification.
I ended up buying JBL Quantum TWS in-ears because they also include a USB-C dongle that speaks their own protocol which allows lowlatency duplex audio. Perfect for audio calls and even gaming. Plus, I don’t need to pair them with every device, I can just bring the dongle. (They can also be paired with Bluetooth and you can switch between dongle and BT whenever you want.)
You’re gonna need wired or 2.4ghz wireless for that.
Technically, Bluetooth uses 2.4GHz XP
When I try to fiddle with them they just start producing a hellish noise that breaks my ears in a certain configuration, I had that happen both on Jabra earbuds and Soundcore headphones, luckily the latter has a wire option as well so that’s a relief
I’m still wondering how to make my headphones work on pop os without crackling
You will not believe this. Solution was adding a line in some config file.
Are you thinking of the standby timeout? Cause I get static on my speakers on any and all distros when no audio is playing. It always happens after 5 seconds of silence. Kinda infuriating that I have to do this on EVERY SINGLE DAMN INSTALL.
For Pulseaudio:
Quickfix (until reboot):sudo su echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_savepermanent fix is to add the line:
options snd-hda-intel power_save=0
to the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.confFor pipewire:
create folder /etc/wireplumber/main.lua.d/ if it does not exist
if you had to create it yourself just copy over the file from /usr/share/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua
otherwise it probably is there already then just edit it
pretty much at the bottom there is a line that says “session.suspend-timout-seconds”
uncomment it and set its value to 0
then reboot
Switching to pipewire from ALSA cured that for me.
Used to have that problem on suse, it was something to do with pulse but I can’t recall, solution was in ArchWiki
I have the exact same headphones hahaha, this is perfect how are you liking them by the way? I had some connection problems on the first month but this 2nd month they’ve been behaving good
just yes. the sound and anc is day and night compared to my more compact redmi buds 3 pro. I used to diss TWS as a whole until I got these pairs. Had some issues after a firmware update but a factory reset did fix it for me. :)
Any way to see which bitrate is currently being used? I know you can set it to use only 909kbps, 606kbps or 303kbps in the wireplumber config, but I am curious which bitrate the adaptive mode (usually) uses.
I’d love to say the same but on my Lenovo laptop I get frequent disconnects with bluetooth earphones on Linux alone. Apparently it’s a firmware problem with the AX200 board, but even after having updated the firmware and following all the online fixes I still have the problem.
My whole use case for my laptop is getting away from my desk when I want to read something and listen to music at the end of the day, but it’s annoying to have to reconnect the earphones every 10 or so minutes. Like everything Linux, it’s incredible as long as you have supported hardware and you don’t bump into some weird edge case.
Not sure if it’s possible on your laptop but I upgraded my Wifi/BT with a AX210NGW on my Thinkpad. Works perfectly now.
I’m pretty sure it is, I’ll keep that in mind, thanks!
I’ve had BT disconnect issues on a 2015 HP EB 840 G2 paired with my ancient Logitech UE speaker. Not sure if it’s the implementation of bluez on mxlinux or my actual bt hardware on the laptop. The result for me is similar to yours: laptop is flaky, so my phone remains my playback source of choice.
Ldac is not actually that good, it’s actually fairly rare that LDAC beats out something like SBC XQ let alone AAC
EDIT: for elaboration, LDAC works at 3 main data rate ranges 990/909, 660/606 and 330/303. Ldac is only high res at the 990 range, and even at that range, it still often looses when pipewire is compiled against libfdk. keep in mind that it’s hard to get real numbers on LDAC because decoding is proprietary, meaning I had to disassemble headphones and connect those for verification, but typically AAC on supported headphones beat out 990kbps LDAC (which is hilarious btw considering LDAC can rarely actually work at 990kbps anyways) and both SBC-XQ and LC3Plus (both of which are usable with pipewire) regularly beat 660kbps LDAC.
TLDR LDAC is crap and SBC-XQ is typically more accurate and lower latency, and LC3Plus is even better then that. and if you have AAC compatible headphones assuming latency isnt a major issue (which you are using LDAC so it’s not) just use AAC, both fidelity and latency is better
keep in mind that it’s hard to get real numbers on LDAC because decoding is proprietary
I used to think the same. But as it turns out, a decoder exists. Maybe some people don’t want anyone to know about it to keep the myths alive ;)
EDIT: Also, as a golden rule, whenever anyone sees the words High-Res in an audio context, they should immediately realize that they are being bullshitted.
just because a decoder exists doesnt mean it’s good and usable, and it also doesn’t mean you are legally allowed to use it without the appropriate licensing
Your skin glows quite beautifully, narc.
His does LDAC compare to aptx?
LDAC wins against APTX under normal use situations but not APTX-HD, they are typically about the same with a large latency penalty for LDAC
