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

LC3 is default and open, but not high quality LC3Plus is however it has a royalty (albiet very cheap)

LC3plus isn't really HiFi. It's designed to be low-complexity & low energy: https://hydrogenaud.io/...

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?

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.

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.

The only thing that worked well and didn't have to be re-installed after a disconnect

I didn't have the same experience at all. I've used a Bluetooth Xbox controller for years, and it's worked great... As long as it was only in Bluetooth. If you try to plug it in, let's say to recharge it or because you want a more reliable connection, you won't be able to reconnect it in Bluetooth, unless you unpair the device first. Apparently, that is even the _expected behavior", for some reason.

The only way to disable that behavior is to go the the Windows device settings and preventing the controller from being recognized as a USB device, so it only uses the USB as a charging port. Another solution would be to connect the controller to a power plug instead of a USB port of the PC to recharge it, but how unintuitive is that? Imagine if Nintendo, Sony, Apple or even Microsoft themselves on Xbox pulled that? That whenever you plugged in your wireless controller to your device, it suddenly stopped working wirelessly? Out of all the smaller or bigger quirks of Windows, this one has been one of the most unnerving to me for a very long time.

Do you have any guidance on how to do on windows 11?

if your distro is not using Pipewire youre using a shitty one

They use the Soundcore branding currently for their audio products but it‘s the same company

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.

Micro center carries soundcore products. Where I bought my current P2-L headphones, couple years back.

LDAC and Multipoint do in fact mix, just not on Sony products.

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.

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.

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

at 990/909 kbps bluetooth can hardly hold that bitrate unless you have really good conditions so much as walking down a stream will bring it down to 660kbps

and yes, AAC does have better fidelity, at 320kbps AAC and Opus are largely transparent to 90% of users keep in mind I am comparing fdkaac on Pipewire, NOT android, this is an important distinction since they were testing android, and you can see here how spotty AAC is on android https://www.soundguys.com/...

I am talking specifcally about linux in this context

EDIT: also it's not about being an apple fanboy, Opus is largely just as good, marginally better, but no headphones support them, if you want you can even compile pipewire with higher bitrate limits on opus for stereo, (IIRC the pro profile can override it? cant remember but code is here https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/...)

You all got a valid point.. it's just that mileage varies and x codec will sound better in y combination. If I remember right, AAC on Android is at times implemented differently than on it's home Apple: The encoder would work with smaller bitrates to save battery. There must be a special synergy for max bitrate LDAC to sound worse than AAC, indeed. All in all my post is about being open minded and giving you the option to use a thing, rather than finding out what codec is universally the best: You virtually can't, can you?

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.

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.

Better latency, better reliability, and better quality under normal listening scenarios

You can change it once connected, but every time it defaults back to LDAC

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_save

permanent fix is to add the line:
options snd-hda-intel power_save=0
to the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

For 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

A2DP itself does support bidi, faststream is a A2DP BIDI profile (it's SBC, it's bad because of really bad bitrate constraints for some reason though) AptX-HD actually support aptx-ll but I find most devices just bug out when you try it. opus also supports bidi on pw.

bandwidth limtations are not an issue with bluetooth itself, you can reliably maintain 300-600kbps, which is more then enough for good quality bidirectional audio. even when using asynchronous modes, you still usually have enough bitrate for audio that would be considered fine.

im not sure why it's not more popular in modern devices, IIRC all the patents on the subject have ended, could be a limitation of low end radios

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.

This is interesting. So these have the "non BT 2.4Ghz" protocol that you generally find in the huge wireless gaming headset?

Ive been looking for a wireless headset that has the low duplex latency of wireless gaming headset, but in a smaller package. Something like the "Microsoft Modern Wireless Headset" but with 2.4Ghz non BT. And I couldn't find yet something like this.

Technically, Bluetooth uses 2.4GHz XP

It is worse than uncompressed, but 990Kbps LDAC is the closest codec to totally transparent I've heard for Bluetooth audio. AptX HD is nearly as good to my ears, and is better than 660Kbps LDAC. The differences are very small though, especially when compared with the differences on the analog side, e.g. the amp, and particularly the headphone design.

Apple side-steps the problem by, at least when you're listening to Apple Music, simply sending the AAC stream as-is to the headphones and has them decode the audio. I don't know why that isn't a more common approach.

I'm still somewhat bemused that we're talking about Bluetooth codecs at all. It surely can't be that difficult technically to get 1.5Mbps actual throughput on Bluetooth and simply send raw 16-bit/44.1Khz PCM. 2.4Ghz WiFi is capable of hundreds of times that speed. Bluetooth has been stuck at the same speeds for decades.

Is the APTX-HD latency good enough for gaming? (And can be used for VoIP?).

I don't know much about BT... But I know that my Pixel buds series A, have terrible latency for gaming unless I use them in headset mode (which then has terrible quality).

I'm pretty sure it is, I'll keep that in mind, thanks!