Author: Chris Hoffman / Source: howtogeek.com
Bluetooth audio is good now, right? That’s what I’ve been hearing, so I purchased a $300 Bluetooth headset for my Windows PC, expecting to have a good experience. It was terrible. I blame Bluetooth—and Windows.
Full disclosure: My coworkers have had great experiences with Bluetooth audio on both Android phones and W1-enabled Apple devices. This is about PC headsets.
Windows Won’t Tell You If It’s Using AptX
Bluetooth is confusing. As audio website Darko.Audio puts it: “Bluetooth audio’s dirty secret is not that it doesn’t sound very good, it’s that it will only sound good if certain conditions are met.”
Modern high-end Bluetooth headsets support AptX, an audio codec compression scheme that offers better sound quality. But AptX is only enabled if it’s supported on both the transmitter and receiver. When using a Bluetooth headset with a PC, it only works if your PC’s hardware and drivers are compatible.
Other configuration issues may also disable AptX audio. As Darko.Audio explains, on a Mac, if you’re using 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, if you have more than two Bluetooth devices connected to a desktop, or if you have more than one connected to a laptop, macOS drops down to lower-quality SBC audio over the Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) connection. That’s according to Apple.
Windows 10 now has integrated support for AptX, but it’s impossible to tell if your Bluetooth connection is actually using AptX. Android and macOS let you see this information, but it isn’t visible anywhere in Windows. So you’ll never know if you’re getting the highest sound quality possible.
RELATED: What’s the Difference Between Bluetooth A2DP and aptX?
Bluetooth Doesn’t Support High-Quality Audio When a Microphone Is In Use
My headset had an integrated microphone, so I expected I could continue using the headphones normally while using the microphone.
But, shockingly, this doesn’t work. If you have a stereo headset with an integrated microphone, you can’t use the headset with normal sound quality while using the microphone. There just isn’t enough bandwidth available to Bluetooth devices, as Sennheiser explains.
Technically, when you’re just using the headphones as a sound output device, they’re using the A2DP Bluetooth profile, and ideally using AptX for maximum sound quality. When you need the microphone, they’ll use the headset profile or hands-free profile (HSP or HFP). This allows for both recording via the microphone and playback via the headphones, but the headphone sound quality is terrible when using HSP or HFP.
If you’re just using a Bluetooth headset to take a phone call, that might be fine. If you want to speak into your headset’s mic while listening to music, playing a game, or watching a video on your PC, you’ll be frustrated.
For a PC headset with an…
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