[groovyd]

when i Alt click the bluetooth in the top bar i see the BTS is showing the codec as SBC, not aptX as the website you pointed me to shows... what next?

 

[groovyd]

After an hour of finding the Bluetooth Explorer (requires to download Developer Tools renamed and repacked to IO Hardware Tools) and getting the right version for the version of XCode I have installed (2 other versions didn't work) I finally am able to 'force use of aptX' and to my dismay it didn't change a thing.  Reboot, reconfigure, etc. etc. still pairs as SBC.  I really have no idea how to get this working but somehow magically through all of this the play/pause and track buttons now work at least, not sure how that happened. What a mess this stuff, with good reason I avoid wireless headphones.
 
Anyway sound isn't all that great using SBC, any help would be appreciated.  I do not have a phone or other bluetooth device to use it with.
 
On top of all that an intermittent connection with my T5p at the jack finds me with a soldering iron in hand re-soldering what was a terrible sloppy job done by someone at Beyer.  Internal to the connector they had both left and right wires bare and both a centimeter long before the solder and a cracked plastic collar that let them short to ground sometimes.  So much for pay more get more.  
 
Alright I am done complaining, sorry guys been a discouraging day.

 

[FullCircle]

  After an hour of finding the Bluetooth Explorer (requires to download Developer Tools renamed and repacked to IO Hardware Tools) and getting the right version for the version of XCode I have installed (2 other versions didn't work) I finally am able to 'force use of aptX' and to my dismay it didn't change a thing.  Reboot, reconfigure, etc. etc. still pairs as SBC.  I really have no idea how to get this working but somehow magically through all of this the play/pause and track buttons now work at least, not sure how that happened. What a mess this stuff, with good reason I avoid wireless headphones.
 
Anyway sound isn't all that great using SBC, any help would be appreciated.  I do not have a phone or other bluetooth device to use it with.
 
On top of all that an intermittent connection with my T5p at the jack finds me with a soldering iron in hand re-soldering what was a terrible sloppy job done by someone at Beyer.  Internal to the connector they had both left and right wires bare and both a centimeter long before the solder and a cracked plastic collar that let them short to ground sometimes.  So much for pay more get more.  
 
Alright I am done complaining, sorry guys been a discouraging day.

 
 
When my computer is feeling down, I give it a cafiene boost....   Usually a Pepsi or Coca Cola

 

[kalrykh]

Reminds me of a Lana del Rey song

 

[bangkokkid]

  After an hour of finding the Bluetooth Explorer (requires to download Developer Tools renamed and repacked to IO Hardware Tools) and getting the right version for the version of XCode I have installed (2 other versions didn't work) I finally am able to 'force use of aptX' and to my dismay it didn't change a thing.  Reboot, reconfigure, etc. etc. still pairs as SBC.  I really have no idea how to get this working but somehow magically through all of this the play/pause and track buttons now work at least, not sure how that happened. What a mess this stuff, with good reason I avoid wireless headphones.
 
Anyway sound isn't all that great using SBC, any help would be appreciated.  I do not have a phone or other bluetooth device to use it with.
 
On top of all that an intermittent connection with my T5p at the jack finds me with a soldering iron in hand re-soldering what was a terrible sloppy job done by someone at Beyer.  Internal to the connector they had both left and right wires bare and both a centimeter long before the solder and a cracked plastic collar that let them short to ground sometimes.  So much for pay more get more.  
 
Alright I am done complaining, sorry guys been a discouraging day.

 
For future reference, you can download Bluetooth Explorer here without downloading Dev Tools or Xcode.
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ks2rifn0ilue8yu/Bluetooth%20Explorer.app.zip?dl=0
 
What version of OS X are you running and what model is your computer?
 
I will spend some time looking into this and contact you directly when I learn something. 

 

[M Coupe]

I would like to know the answer to this as I ponder the Savant/BTS deal.  My computer is Mac Pro (the black cylinder) and a macbook pro retina 15" 2015 model.  If you have a driver, I may be one step closer.  On second, thought don't...please don.t

 

[Gilles De Rais]

After an hour of finding the Bluetooth Explorer (requires to download Developer Tools renamed and repacked to IO Hardware Tools) and getting the right version for the version of XCode I have installed (2 other versions didn't work) I finally am able to 'force use of aptX' and to my dismay it didn't change a thing.  Reboot, reconfigure, etc. etc. still pairs as SBC.  I really have no idea how to get this working but somehow magically through all of this the play/pause and track buttons now work at least, not sure how that happened. What a mess this stuff, with good reason I avoid wireless headphones.

Anyway sound isn't all that great using SBC, any help would be appreciated.  I do not have a phone or other bluetooth device to use it with.

On top of all that an intermittent connection with my T5p at the jack finds me with a soldering iron in hand re-soldering what was a terrible sloppy job done by someone at Beyer.  Internal to the connector they had both left and right wires bare and both a centimeter long before the solder and a cracked plastic collar that let them short to ground sometimes.  So much for pay more get more.  

Alright I am done complaining, sorry guys been a discouraging day.

I can't help but feel you're chasing something down the rabbit hole with your obsession with AptX. This article is a good discussion of Bluetooth and audio and indicates as you may note that claims for the apparent superiority of AptX are based on the developer's statements. The comments also shed some light on this.

http://www.cnet.com/au/news/can-aptx-give-you-better-sound-over-bluetooth/

The key thing to note in the article is, as I've seen mentioned a few times with the Noble BTS, that Bluetooth 4.0 has the innate capacity to transmit higher quality codecs ie Apple Lossless (ALAC). If the BTS is using this native capability for your Mac, assuming you have ripped your stuff in ALAC, than the transmission protocol is by and large irrelevant. Indeed I'm pretty sure over on Inner Fidelity that the Axpona/Noble BTS article refers to supporting Apple Lossless or AptX.

Your problem may not be the transmission protocol, but rather you just don't like the way Bluetooth sounds. I can sympathise with that, the BTS is extremely convenient, it just isn't high fidelity to my ears (sorry Noble!). Treat it as it is - a $99 dongle and you can see the value in it. Just my observations.


Regards,

Giles

PS after I wrote the above I found this thread which makes further observations on both AptX and the Noble BTS on the last few pages.
http://www.head-fi.org/t/601665/what-are-head-fi-members-views-on-apt-x-lossless-codec-over-bluetooth/240

 

[groovyd]

I can't help but feel you're chasing something down the rabbit hole with your obsession with AptX. This article is a good discussion of Bluetooth and audio and indicates as you may note that claims for the apparent superiority of AptX are based on the developer's statements. The comments also shed some light on this.

http://www.cnet.com/au/news/can-aptx-give-you-better-sound-over-bluetooth/

The key thing to note in the article is, as I've seen mentioned a few times with the Noble BTS, that Bluetooth 4.0 has the innate capacity to transmit higher quality codecs ie Apple Lossless (ALAC). If the BTS is using this native capability for your Mac, assuming you have ripped your stuff in ALAC, than the transmission protocol is by and large irrelevant. Indeed I'm pretty sure over on Inner Fidelity that the Axpona/Noble BTS article refers to supporting Apple Lossless or AptX.

Your problem may not be the transmission protocol, but rather you just don't like the way Bluetooth sounds. I can sympathise with that, the BTS is extremely convenient, it just isn't high fidelity to my ears (sorry Noble!). Treat it as it is - a $99 dingle and you can see the value in it. Just my observations.


Regards,

Giles

 
I am motivated for aptX because it is a lossless transfer but over bluetooth.  I don't know of any other format that will transfer lossless over bluetooth at the moment because of the limited bandwidth.  Traditional bluetooth and the SBC codec it is using do not sound good to my ears at all and it drops out quite often even a short distance from the laptop.  I've been told the aptX handles that situation better as well in terms of buffering ahead and correcting errors.  If I can't support aptX to my laptop I might as well sell the BTS because I do not see any purpose for it.  I am just trying to sort out if it has any value to me at all and so far I don't see it.

 

[kalrykh]

   
I am motivated for aptX because it is a lossless transfer but over bluetooth.  I don't know of any other format that will transfer lossless over bluetooth at the moment because of the limited bandwidth.  Traditional bluetooth and the SBC codec it is using do not sound good to my ears at all and it drops out quite often even a short distance from the laptop.  I've been told the aptX handles that situation better as well in terms of buffering ahead and correcting errors.  If I can't support aptX to my laptop I might as well sell the BTS because I do not see any purpose for it.  I am just trying to sort out if it has any value to me at all and so far I don't see it.

It's not lossless.  If you're looking for max sound quality, you won't get it.  You'll get good sound quality with freedom to move around without worrying about a cable.  If you're sitting in front of a mac laptop, I don't see much point in using the BTS, unless you feel the need to get up and walk around while you're on skype or something.  You may find a use for it in the future.  I would hang on to it, but that's me.  

 

[Gilles De Rais]

You may want to check that AptX and lossless thing. Pretty much everything I've read indicates that the AptX audio transmission is NOT lossless - it is limited to a max 326kb transmission. AptX is a lossy Ad2p transmission protocol. There is an AptX Lossless, but I'm pretty sure that that is a codec in itself like ALAC and FLAC. It is not what is in the BTS, that will be everyday ordinary AptX.

Here's another resource to check
http://theheadphonelist.com/wireless-fidelity-making-sense-bluetooth-headphone-technology/

Regards,

Giles

 

[FullCircle]

[quote name="Gilles De Rais"

Treat it as it is - a $99 dongle and you can see the value in it. Just my observations.
[/quote]

Or treat it like a 55$ dongle and a 35$ cable bundled together or a 55$ cable and a 35$ dongle either way these are prices commonly found for a dongle and a spc braided cable

 

[bangkokkid]

Right, aptX is not lossless, we have never claimed it is, but it is closer than other Bluetooth codecs.

There are other forms of aptX, but I believe they are meant for other applications and are not available in the series of chips intended for use in consumer audio products. Ultimately, we are using the highest quality Bluetooth chip with aptX support intended for our application in the BTS, the limitations and capabilities of which are not set by us.

As John has reiterated many times, the whole idea behind BTS is convenience and fulfilling some long standing requests from our user base (ex. mic/controls for phone use). If you are after a lossless listening experience, don't use BTS, it's that simple. We feel BTS lends itself very well to a variety of situations with "good-enough" audio quality and at its price point is a more than fair value.

 

[uchihaitachi]

http://nobleaudio.com/en/about/dealers/

United Kingdom

Aid2Hearing

22 Oakleigh Gardens

Whetstone

London

N20 9AB
+44 (0) 20 8445 6030+44 (0) 20 8445 6030
[COLOR=0066CC]giseleflower@aid2hearing.co.uk[/COLOR]
[COLOR=0066CC]http://www.aid2hearing.co.uk[/COLOR]

She is also in central London at Harley street on Fridays.

 

[Neo Zuko]

Can she come to San Francisco on Tuesdays?

Btw, Noble Audio is such a great name for a company. The other IEM company names don't seem nearly as cool.

 

[fiascogarcia]

Can she come to San Francisco on Tuesdays?

 

No, she'll be in Colorado.