Standard Bluetooth should soon support hi-res and lossless audio without the need for special codecs like Qualcomm's aptX or Sony's LDAC.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced that Bluetooth High Data Throughout (HDT) – which will come as part of Bluetooth 7.0 next year – will "support lossless and high-resolution audio as well as advances in multi-channel surround sound and spatial audio".
That means that as long as your phone and wireless headphones both support Bluetooth 7.0, you should get better sound quality from your digital music.
At present, you need a codec like one of Qualcomm's many aptX variants or Sony's LDAC in order to support hi-res or lossless audio files over Bluetooth. Both your audio source (i.e. a phone or tablet) and your audio device (i.e. headphones or speaker) need to support the same codec in order to play music in that quality.
Unfortunately, many don't. Which is hardly surprising, given there are at least 11 wireless codecs to choose from. iPhones don't support either aptX or LDAC, and according to Sennheiser, less than 16 per cent of current smartphones support aptX Adaptive, while less than 1 per cent play nice with aptX Lossless.
The situation is so complicated that some models of Samsung phone differ in codec support depending on which region they're sold in (in some regions, they use Samsung's own processors instead of Qualcomm's aptX-supporting Snapdragon ones).
But with HDT built into the core version of Bluetooth, higher-quality listening should soon become the norm.
Bluetooth HDT also promises "faster data transfer, increased capacity, better energy efficiency, and enhanced reliability".
Its maximum supported bitrate is 7.5Mbps, which is nearly four times that of Bluetooth LE.
The first devices supporting Bluetooth HDT should arrive early next year – expect to see some at the CES trade show in January. If it works as promised, it should mean an end to codec clash, and higher-quality wireless listening for all.
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