This is not-so-new news cause it was announced before and it's been in the developer previews, but just got a chance to try it out with my Pixel XL and a Sony SRS-X77 speaker, which has LDAC support. Can't hear the difference but I didn't really make any proper tests, just a quick listen. As long as there aren't any obvious artifacts I don't really care either way, to be honest.
What I did notice, is that LDAC, at least with this speaker, is transmitting at 96kHz sample rate, is this a waste of bitrate, or does the LDAC codec just encode for audibility like other lossy codecs? Anyone know?
Other random things:
LDAC has 3 settings besides adaptive bit rate ("Best Effort"):
- Optimized for audio quality (990kbps/909kbps)
- Balanced audio and connection quality (660kbps/606kbps)
- Optimized for connection quality (330kbps/303kbps)
Both aptX and aptX HD are available. I understand there is an "aptX Low Latency" codec that I would have preferred, but whatever I guess.
There are options to manually change sample rate (44.1/48/88.2/96) and bit depth (16/14/32), which, doesn't lossy audio lack bit depth?
There's an option to force mono too, which is nice but if I'm not mistaken it's redundant with an older Android accessibility option that renders all audio mono, but ok.
Finally, the "disable absolute volume" toggle works! This means that you can separate your device and your phone's BT volume again, like it was before Marshmallow (6.0).
You can switch AVRCP version from 1.4 (default) to 1.5 or 1.6. I noticed that 1.6 gives me a playlist and other categories to choose in my car stereo from the Google Play Music app, which is neat.
All in all, a pretty nice jump from BT options from previous Android versions.
Topic about Opus as a Bluetooth codec: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114566/topicseen.html
In my opinion, it would be very nice if one day Opus will be used for this.
Have you tested if gapless playback will work over the BT connection?
Whenever I try to play a gapless album over a BT connection in my car, there is a slight pause in between tracks. It really gets annoying when listening to a continuous mix album.
The tracks playback gaplessly under other playing methods.
JXL
Which player are you using? I really only stream music on my phone (Pixel XL) nowadays. I like iOS more for playing locally, but haven't used my iPod in years, and my iPhone SE doesn't even have any songs loaded.