[Czilla9000]

If I have a pair of Bluetooth headphones that support AAC, and I'm using the Tidal client for Mac, am I better off with Tidal's Lossless or Lossy codec?

I ask because presumably all data is being compressed into AAC anyway for transmission. So would it be best to just stream Tidal's lossy (I think it's 320 kbps AAC) files, or stream them lossless and let my computer do the AAC compression?

I could save some money if it turns out "Tidal Premium" has better quality in this use case.

 

[torifile]

Unless you’re using headphones and a source capable of Apt-x, save your money. Bluetooth is a terrible way to try to get good audio quality. It’s a very convenient tech but it’s not there for good quality.

 

[Czilla9000]

Unless you’re using headphones and a source capable of Apt-x, save your money. Bluetooth is a terrible way to try to get good audio quality. It’s a very convenient tech but it’s not there for good quality.

Both are capable of Apt-X. But I heard AAC, like what Apple uses for iOS, is better than AptX.

 

[torifile]

Both are capable of Apt-X. But I heard AAC, like what Apple uses for iOS, is better than AptX.

I’m not aware of that being the case. It’s likely an insignificant difference but if I had to guess, I’d guess that apt-x would be better SQ.

 

[Czilla9000]

I’m not aware of that being the case. It’s likely an insignificant difference but if I had to guess, I’d guess that apt-x would be better SQ.

I'm hoping you're right. I've noticed that AAC has a lot more latency, making watching Netflix or YouTube difficult. So now I've forced Mac OSX to use Apt-X. In which case going from Tidal Lossless-To-AptX must be better than, I'd assume, than going from Tidal AAC-to-AptX.

 

[Ad-Astra]

download music makes it easier, just my opinion

 

[robotncc]

download music makes it easier, just my opinion

yup, I quitted Tidal HIFI subscribe after 2 months

 

[jeffmd]

Some misinformation here. Bluetooth SBC is what everyone hates. Apples support for AAC is great for beats headphones if the source is aac but useless otherwise. It should play without recompression but I suspect the headphones have limitations like up to 320kbps lossy.

Aptx should be comparable and ldac is the best. These 2 codecs are also designed to not be as destructive compared to recompressing an mpeg based file with a second mpeg based compression.

 

[Roseval]

All OS, be it OSX, Win, Android have multiple audio streams as default e.g. the sound track of a movie is playing but when a mail arrives, you get a system sound for notification.
This can only be done when audio and system sound are mixed.
So whatever the audio format is, it will be converted to what is set in the audio panel of the OS e.q. 2 channel, 24 bit, 44.1 kHz PCM audio.
This mix will be send to the audio device.
If it is Bluetooth it will be converted to the codec in use be it SBC, AAC, APTX, etc.

To phrase it different, I do think it highly unlikely that a AAC audio source is send unaltered to the Bluetooth. If that would be the case, you won’t hear any notification etc.
If all this is true then playing a lossy source (AAC) means decoding to PCM followed by encoding to AAC. In this case a lossless source is to be preferred.
In practice the difference might be inaudible.