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Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

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Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#81

Post by pseudosavant »

monocasa wrote: post #16
ulfw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Audio needs to not sound like it's being played underwater." What kind of bluetooth have you been using? Modern codecs sound perfectly fine.

Modern codecs are non standard vendor extensions.

What do you consider a 'modern' codec? SBC is the only codec that basically can't sound good. AAC, MP3, and even ATRAC can all easily deliver 'CD Quality' sound over bluetooth, and they are all officially part of the A2DP spec. Not required codecs, but part of the spec and far from a 'non-standard vendor extension'.

The only reason you need something that supports more than SBC and AAC is because of poor AAC implementations for most Android devices. AAC is very well understood, performs well, has very inexpensive FRAND licensing, and works well for every non-Android platform.

And, as aptX has become incredibly common for Android, practically speaking audio sinks should only have to support AAC or aptX really. AAC for iOS/Windows/Mac/Linux and aptX for Android.

Check A2DP section at https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/assigned-numbers/Au...

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#82

Post by TylerE »

lightedman wrote: post #76
TylerE wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, performing is not playback.

You're making assumptions without all of the information. WHEN YOU ARE PLAYING ALONG you need to have the timing right. That means if I set the orchestra off, hit play on my metronome, and my beat is half a measure off, we just screwed up, especially when we're doing things like musically-timed parts of the on-stage performance. Or when I hit play on our Silent Movie with original orchestral score made by local music…

I'm not making any assumptions. You're the one who keeps bringing "playing along" and "timing" into it. That's not what this is about...at all.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#83

Post by __david__ »

klodolph wrote: post #17
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your use case for low latency? I understand that some want it for bluetooth headsets for videogames, where milliseconds mater - but beyond that? Also what about AptX LL? Or LLAC?

If you are a musician, try introducing a 10ms or 20ms delay and then play something on piano or guitar. Whether you notice it depends on a ton of factors which I’m not going to get into, but in general, at 10ms the music will feel sluggish and you will have difficulty playing on the beat. This can be verified with ABX tests if you like. The timing accuracy for professional musicians can approach 1ms under controlled…

Be happy you are not an organist :-). My sister is and turns out large pipe organs have like 250ms or more of latency. It becomes incredibly demanding to stay in time during a performance.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#84

Post by xnyan »

Kirby64 wrote: post #50
xnyan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not mentioned, seeing as this was a press release if it was better than the current standard then one would assume they would have mentioned it. Assuming this is the case, 200-500ms in real world conditions. With super duper non-standard proprietary tech on both ends from vendors like Qualcomm it can be in theory be as as low as 32ms, but in practice I don't see those numbers. New airpods with apple's proprietar…

Yeah, according to some news articles, I see Airpods Pro have a latency of ~144ms end-to-end. I haven't noticed that latency when I watch videos on my phone... On the other hand, I definitely noticed the latency with a much cheaper pair of true wireless earbuds. They probably had the ~500ms latency you mention. I wonder how much the real-world latency is. If the codec itself is only adding 20ms, what about the rest o…

Definitely not an expert in BT but I've worked with it on the edges. Bluetooth is the biggest standard I've ever worked with by far in just terms of sheer page count, to say nothing of its complexity. That's just the core spec, not any of the other pieces you need too to make it do useful work.

I would not believe the 20ms number without real world performance benchmarks tested in operational conditions for my specific product but if that is what is actually happening, I suspect something with the implementation on the specific platform is to blame - again, the standard is ridiculously complex and hard to implement. It's notoriously bad on android (by bad I mean a dumpster fire) and while windows is actually been making progress, depending on the SoC of the physical adapter your experience can range from great to near android level dumpster fire.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#85

Post by rlpb »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #8

The "Broadcast" mode is really an interesting concept - depending on the available range. There are a lot of potential uses for this technology beyond the basic. Of course "I can share my headphones with you" is great, in the day in age of watching moves on iPads in say a plane. However I think in a business setting the broadcasts could be used for all sorts of cool bits. Remember the TV's in airports running news on…

I wonder how this will fare with spam. If I'm to have autoconnection, for example, then the broadcaster will need to be authenticated.

I can imagine a scenario where I autoconnect to my public transit provider's broadcasts to hear announcements, but an unscrupulous advertiser spoofs the broadcast to spam me.

If there's no authentication or anyone can just broadcast, then I think the spam problem will make broadcast reception unusable in public spaces.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#86

Post by m463 »

gumby wrote: post #47
rwem wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer application for this technology is a bicycle bell you can use to break the trance of phone-staring pedestrians who are randomly staggering down the pavement.

Once you can do that the killer app will be intrusive ads. And those people who drive down the street blasting loud music (err, I mean "sharing their stereos")? They'll be able to share directly to the people on the sidewalk! (I loved your comment -- I think we both know this won't be supported).

In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel/Claptastic Voyage there's an enemy called an Adbug.

"While technically hostile, Adbugs do not directly attack Vault Hunters. Instead, they follow their targeted Vault Hunter around and beam a semi-transparent advertisement at them, which is placed in a random position on the field of vision, obscuring part of the field of view."

You can tell when you're being attackd by an Adbug because they beam audio advertisements into your head.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#87

Post by photojosh »

Lammy wrote: post #51
rwem wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The killer application for this technology is a bicycle bell you can use to break the trance of phone-staring pedestrians who are randomly staggering down the pavement.

A bicycle is a road vehicle. You shouldn’t be riding on the sidewalk.

Ah, you must be related to the person from the other day who told my TEN-YEAR OLD to get off the sidewalk because it's illegal.

By the time he rode back and shakily told us what had happened, I had no choice but to inform her at the top of my lungs (since she was 600ft down the path) that, no, it's legal if you're under 16 (in our state).

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#89

Post by lightedman »

TylerE wrote: post #82
lightedman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making assumptions without all of the information. WHEN YOU ARE PLAYING ALONG you need to have the timing right. That means if I set the orchestra off, hit play on my metronome, and my beat is half a measure off, we just screwed up, especially when we're doing things like musically-timed parts of the on-stage performance. Or when I hit play on our Silent Movie with original orchestral score made by local music…

I'm not making any assumptions. You're the one who keeps bringing "playing along" and "timing" into it. That's not what this is about...at all.

You said 20ms of latency is fine for media playback.

In my actual use case, IT IS NOT. I'm playing ALONG with that music. And that music is piped into the SAME SET OF HEADPHONES as my guitar is also run into the computer. The latency of what I will hear music-wise, try to time along to, play, and then hear my guitar played back to me, would be roughly 40 or 50ms because of the additional input lags. Absolutely unacceptable to any serious musician. Add another 150ms or so if you're trying to hear your guitar by simply selecting the garbage "Listen to this device" option in the Windows Sound Mixer of any vintage after XP, as opposed to trying to listen to your guitar and time it with everything by unmuting in your sound card drivers for practically zero latency (if they even offer that option. It seems to be getting rarer and this was bog-standard on regular onboard audio back in the day.)

I've already tried this with Bluetooth before. This is why I already know about this in such depth, and have a mixer board hooked up to my computer, where everything is hard-wired and pretty much latency-free. Bluetooth simply isn't there, and likely will not be any time soon.

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