HydrogenAudio

Lossy Audio Compression => Other Lossy Codecs => Topic started by: jido on 2020-01-13 17:32:42

Title: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: jido on 2020-01-13 17:32:42
Do you know any interesting info about Fraunhofer's LC3 codec?

https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/bluetooth-technology/le-audio/
https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/communication/lc3.html

The Bluetooth SIG could have used Opus to address most of the needs, no?
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: saratoga on 2020-01-13 21:28:28
For 160-350k a lower complexity codec probably made sense. 
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: Phanton_13 on 2020-01-13 23:45:17
I think the same that Garf about it, basically they want to sell a license for it.
I wonder why they didn't just use Opus instead of creating a new codec?

If you look at the specification, it's basically Opus with a few marginal gadgets thrown in. I'm going to make a not-very-wild guess that you'll need a license for the gadgets, from the people who wrote the standard.
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: binaryhermit on 2020-01-16 07:34:19
The Bluetooth SIG could have used Opus to address most of the needs, no?
Not the need to make money by licensing proprietary tech to device manufacturers.
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: darkbyte on 2020-04-19 21:05:54
Will this codec at least introduce good quality bidirectional audio into the official Bluetooth LE stack? (eg. gaming headsets with simultaneous input/output audio paths)
There's a hackish solution called FastStream for classic Bluetooth, but the bitrate budget is very low for the used SBC codec (212kbps down / 72kbps up), so it's probably acceptable for game audio but nothing else.
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: VEG on 2020-10-12 10:05:33
Demo of the LC3 in comparison to SBC: https://www.bluetooth.com/tools/audio-codec-demo/


Curious, why sample rate is so low for LC3 128 kbps and lower. Is it a technical limitation of the LC3? I thought it must be similar to Opus. Opus sounds much better than LC3 at 64-128kbps, according to these examples. Huge improvement over SBC though.
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: LithosZA on 2020-10-12 15:35:16
It Isn't sounding that great, but it definitely is an upgrade from SBC. Maybe the are using the smallest frame sizes possible to get a very low latency?
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: binaryhermit on 2020-10-12 19:17:24
Maybe I'm deaf, but I've never heard any major obvious issues with SBC bluetooth other than dropouts due to signal.
Title: Re: Bluetooth LC3
Post by: LithosZA on 2020-10-12 21:29:08
Maybe I'm deaf, but I've never heard any major obvious issues with SBC bluetooth other than dropouts due to signal.
I've only had issues with older Android phones a long time ago when very low bitrates were negotiated between devices. I couldn't prove this, but it just didn't sound right. I use SBC from my phone to my car's audio system and I don't hear any issues.