46 JAZZTIMES SEPTEMBER 2019
9Ì
ith headphone jacks dis-
appearing from all Apple
phones and many Android
phones, listening to audio on the go of-
ten demands that you use wireless Blue-
tooth headphones. Although it’s possible
to use wired headphones if you attach
a headphone amp dongle, headphone
makers tell me almost no one both-
ers—and that’s why they’re switching
their headphones to Bluetooth as fast as
they can. Bluetooth is more convenient
because it’s wireless, but it also reduces
sound quality. This prospect bothers se-
rious listeners. But thanks to the techno-
logical advances being implemented on
new products, going Bluetooth doesn’t
necessarily mean sacrificing quality.Playing the Standards
The standard Bluetooth audio format
is called SBC, for Sub-Band Codec. It’s
similar to the MP3 technology often
used to reduce the size of digital audioBeating the Bluetooth Blues
Bluetooth is hard to escape these days—but there are ways to
make it sound better BY BRENT BUTTERWORTHAUDIO FILES
files. Like MP3, SBC discards some of
the data in an audio recording, but the
data it discards represents subtle details
that are difficult or impossible to hear,
especially through most headphones
and wireless speakers.
Still—as I found when I put together
a Bluetooth blind test on my website,
brentbutterworth.com—while the lossin sound quality with SBC
is fairly benign, it’s almost
always audible. For the last few years, the
aptX codec has been offered as a sonic
upgrade over SBC, but my blind tests
show no significant sonic advantage of
aptX over SBC.
Fortunately, Qualcomm, the company
that makes aptX Bluetooth chips, now
offers aptX-HD, a higher-quality version
of aptX that doesn’t throw away as much
data. Standard aptX carries 352 kilobits of
data per second, while aptX-HD carries
576 kilobits per second, or 63 percent
more data. Compare these numbers to
the standard CD data rate of 1,411 kbps.
You can hear the difference in my blind
test, which includes aptX-HD as well as
standard aptX and SBC.
To my ears, it’s a significant difference,
which is why I’m happy to see aptX-HD
now being included in many new head-
phones, including the Bowers & Wilkins
PX, NAD Viso HP70, PSB M4U8, and Sony
WH-1000XM3 noise-canceling head-
phones, and the Beyerdynamic Amiron
Home Wireless and HiFiMan Ananda-BT
open-back audiophile headphones.x Audio Files: Brent Butterworth on Bluetooth guitar amps