PDevil
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2016
- Posts
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- 38
That's all hype. aptX won't sound as good as Apple Music or Google Play with a wire, let alone have a difference streaming Tidal hi-fi.
Not necessarily. aptX, just like AAC and mp3, is a lossy codec that is able to produce transparent results, better than SBC at similar bitrates. Going from Tidal HD (lossless) to transmission via aptX is a lossless-to-lossy compression. Playing Apple Music/Google Music/Spotify content means that it's a lossy-to-lossy compression. It would be the same as playing lossless files on an iPhone to a pair of headphones using AAC. We are talking about high bitrates (256kbps+) here and the last lossy-to-lossy public listening test on HA showed that iTunes AAC was able to produce pretty transparent results taking a source 320kbps mp3 file and encoding it down to 256kbps AAC. aptX wasn't tested as, at the time, the codec wasn't available for download. So you could be right in that it won't make a difference what the source audio is. Or someone might actually be able to distinguish between a lossless and lossy source via Bluetooth (and that aptX could theoretically be better than iTunes AAC).
A blind, volume-matched listening test would determine this but, alas, I don't think Qualcomm makes the aptX encoder publicly available and I don't think there's a public decoder/plug-in for foobar2000.
On a side note, the positive reviews for the Forza Metalo wireless have me contemplating them again. I like my BeatsX but their audio quality leaves me wanting more. Their connectivity is rock solid but I don't like how much excess wire there is around my ears. Plus I absolutely hate having to carry around a Lightning cable when all of my devices are either USB-C (my phone and Bluetooth speaker) or microUSB (all my other headphones, DSLR camera). I would probably love the Lightning cable if I had an iPhone and was in Apple's universe but I'm not.