Jazzophile
New Head-Fier
What he said.My experience with aptX adaptive on both the Bathys and PX8 is that it is inferior in the midrange to wired and prioritizes high frequency. AptX HD has mid range that is closer to wired on the PX8 while adaptive has high frequency range that is closer to wired. Basically HD vs Adaptive is a trade off in the 420kbs version. Not sure if anyone is using the high bit rate version yet. If I had to chose between 420kbps adaptive and HD then I would pick HD every time. The high bit rate version of adaptive does look interesting, but I fear it will be difficult to use on crowded areas. At least LDAC 990 is somewhat unstable when you have lots of other BT units in the area.
In my experience the jump from 16 to 24 bit is the game changer and the increase in sampling rate is minor if your DAC has good reconstruction filters. One major advantage of 96khz is if you are using slow roll off filters as you start the roll off outside of the audible frequency range. Generally wouldn't worry much about high sample rate on BT headphones as the bit rate is so low that most, if not all, advantages of high sample rate is lost in the compression.
Well said actually.
One thing I have noticed is that APTX Adaptive sounds a little more "dynamic" to me than APTX HD. Might be the increased high frequency energy that was addressed above. It presents to me as a slightly increased dynamic range.
I never feel as if I am missing anything with APTX HD though.
16-24 bit matters far more than 48 to 96 khz....