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Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

bluetooth.com

91–100 of 108 posts

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#91
post #13

This literally addresses none of my complaints regarding Bluetooth Audio. Latency needs to be on the order of single-digit milliseconds. LC3 can achieve around 20. One order of magnitude too high. Audio needs to not sound like it's being played underwater. And give me 100 feet of range.

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

My fancy Sony headphones sound great until I need to make a call whereupon they revert to HSP which sounds awful...

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have a speaker on every table without wiring the place all day.

I suppose, but they'd still need electricity so running PoE is no harder and then you aren't worrying about things like interference.

Yeh, that's the logic I apply to CCTV installs. But a restaurant could easily swap drill batteries out of table speakers at cleanup every night.

That's the difference in £200 speaker * tables vs that + poe gear, engineer and cable install that must what 10 grand? And now you can't rearrange the tables for a wedding party.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#93
post #33
post #29

Where can I find more about LC3 codec? What about LE audio specs? Is this open source or do they sell licenses for this?

I too am interested in this. The only thing I've been able to dig up so far is that it's a new codec, built for BT LE Audio, that seems to have been designed by Synopsys[1] 1. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/synopsys-rel...

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Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#94
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it, if I watch an opus music on YouTube, will my headphone transmute opus into LC3? Why this indirection and overcompression? Latency shouldn't exist at all with opus anyway, YouTube just has to send cached audio to the headphone.

Because that requires a Bluetooth processor that can decode Opus. Also, it's a lot less simple than that. You aren't sending the raw audio file to the Bluetooth chip, you're sending an internal audio stream which is already getting converted anyways. The path is almost always: input audio stream -> decode into raw PCM/PDM/TDM/whatever -> convert to whatever sample rate you're using internally -> move it to your outpu…

I suspect the main reason they created a new codec is to collect a few billion in royalties.

The most obvious choice here was to allow MP3 as a codec choice, but the patents are all expired on MP3 so that's not a revenue source. Doing that would have avoided recoding for most music.

Every Bluetooth chip I've seen has enough CPU to decode any of these codecs. The only question would be power consumption during decoding.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#95
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, plus everyone at the bar can listen to whichever game they want without annoying everyone else. That is killer.

So you go to a bar, don't talk to people, and listen to a specific game solo. Why not just stay at home? The other examples named above make sense, this one seems like a stretch. The whole purpose of going to the bar is to be around other people, the whole point of watching sports at a bar is to enjoy it together.

That works fine when there is only one game one. How does a bar full of people listen to three separate college football games going on at the same time? Also, a lot of people are introverts and like to be around other people without being forced to contribute to conversation. You can feel part of the crowd with being in it.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#96
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that requires a Bluetooth processor that can decode Opus. Also, it's a lot less simple than that. You aren't sending the raw audio file to the Bluetooth chip, you're sending an internal audio stream which is already getting converted anyways. The path is almost always: input audio stream -> decode into raw PCM/PDM/TDM/whatever -> convert to whatever sample rate you're using internally -> move it to your outpu…

I suspect the main reason they created a new codec is to collect a few billion in royalties. The most obvious choice here was to allow MP3 as a codec choice, but the patents are all expired on MP3 so that's not a revenue source. Doing that would have avoided recoding for most music. Every Bluetooth chip I've seen has enough CPU to decode any of these codecs. The only question would be power consumption during decodin…

Sure, most Bluetooth chips CAN decode most codecs... but it's a matter of power efficiency. If you're trying to make things as efficient as possible, you don't want something that can decode a bunch of different codecs. More specialized means it should be more efficient.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#97
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding on the road is even more dangerous in some areas, though. If a cyclist and a pedestrian collide, someone might go to the hospital. If a cyclist and a car collide, someone is likely to die, and it's basically always the cyclist.

That kind of reasoning wouldn’t make me feel better if I were the pedestrian who had to go to the hospital. You make it sound like bicycles are just an inherently bad thing to have around :)

If we're fantasizing about eliminating some mode of transport, my vote is for cars. Most of my initial parent comment's concerns would go away if there weren't any cars, and pedestrians would be safer on crosswalks too.

In reality, though, we all have to get along. And those concerns are addressed by cyclists not riding at breakneck speed and going blindly around corners. I don't see either of those behaviors very often in my area.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#98
post #29

Where can I find more about LC3 codec? What about LE audio specs? Is this open source or do they sell licenses for this?

Why do we need another codec than opus? Is it complementary? Also why do Bluetooth create a latency, this is pure nonsense. YouTube has cached the video so instead of sending in real time audio to my headphone, why can't the YouTube app send cached audio too in order to have zero latency?

Interesting idea! This introduces the same problems that an online game suffers though. 90% of the time you can predict successfully what is playing, but as soon as one scrubs, or pauses the video, the signal already sent to the headphones would be out of sync. Not sure how that is fixed without delaying the video also.

If it could recover fast enough to play the right audio in time, then it would seem that bluetooth is already low latency enough to play in real time anyway? Or am I missing something.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#99
In slightly related news, does anyone know where in the Bluetooth spec soft power buttons are required? (press for three seconds to turn on, oh wait it was already on, not it's off, press for three more seconds...) My biggest complaints with Bluetooth are exacerbated by the fact that it's not possible to flick a power button off and back on again.

Re: Announcing Bluetooth LE Audio

#100
post #28
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.

I don't think this is how it will work. Broadcasting won't immediately interrupt others' connections.

Its bluetooth, there will be bugs and crappy implementations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesnarfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluejacking
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