Bluetooth?

[Hofnar]

My first bluetooth audio product was (is) an Audio Pro Addon C5 active speaker that I instantly fell in love with. This was ten years ago. The music I streamed from my phone and laptop sounded so good (to my ears)  that I seriously contemplated a minimalistic sound system consisting of said speaker, a turntable and my laptop. Still, in my weaker moments, I thick that really could be the way to go. When my yongets son started his family (now they have two kids) and said he had no room for a stereo (and his Dual 505 had broken down) I gifted him a C5 and an AT LP-5 turntable. OK, there´s wire between his turntable and speaker but every time I visit we play both records and streamed music and we´re both quite satisfied with the sound.

Then, eight (?) years ago I bought a new integrated amplifier, an Advance Acoustic X60i and a WTX-500 bluetooth dongle. I connected my Technics CD player and my Technics tuner to the amplifier but they have rarely been turned on since I mostly  either play records or listen to music streamed, via bluetooth, from my phone or laptop.

The next bluetooth device was the car, a Skoda Fabia, I bought seven yeras ago. It has bluetooth that automatically connects to my phone so I can aswer calls ”hands free” but also enables me to stram music from the phone to the car stereo. Then I bought  a pair of headphones (Jay´s) that I bought to use when travelling (I frequently go by boat to Gotland, a trip that takes about three and a half hour).

I´m aware that, at least in theory, a wired connection is superior to bluetooth and should give better sound. Maybe, if i listened critically, I´d be able to hear that but the simple truth is that bluetooth sounds good enough to me and my 66 years old hearing. So I´ve stopped feeling guilty about using it.


https://blinksandbuttons.net/is-bluetooth-audio-quality-good/

[rfgumby]

No reason to feel sorry about it.   Ease of use often equates to more appreciation of music.  It certainly allows you to play and listen more often.  Which is the point, really.

I happen to know a number of sins committed by both the encoding and the wireless BT transport, so I suppose it makes me a little snobby about BT, certainly got my home rig.   But there are some really cool little circuits for BLE (BlueTooth Low Energy) which allow minimal use simple devices to run off of batteries for months to years of service.  So that’s cool.

The technology keeps getting better, so there’s many things to be amazed about these days.  Like the convenience of enjoying music in the car, or on a ferry…

[RR1957]

For several years I use a small bluetooth receiver on my set.
First it was the vintage mono audio set of Philips of 1957.
It is a 'receiver' with three external speakers and of course tube technology.
See the thread about it in the mono part of LH. I used this kind of systems for 25 years.
The blue tooth receiver is a simple device which I connected mono on this set.
Now the same bluetooth receiver is connected on the Quad set and I use it every day to
listen to radio broadcasts and music streamers like "The Great American Songbook Radio".
The Quad tuner became a kind of decoration to show the complete set. I seldom use the tuner.
Also, the quality of streaming with blue tooth is much better. The streaming is comming from
iPads as remote controls. Simple and very efficient. I only needed an external switch for three
devices to connect on the Quad 33.
Also I have a lot of my cd's copied on my hardware devices to bring the music of them to the
stereo set. Sounds better to me than the cd's using in the TivoliCD in my experience.
I can say I use it for 60 percent and 20 percent is analogue with records on my Lenco.
The other 20 percent is the vintage Philips radio of 1956 which I use every morning to listen to
the news. Very analogue of course. Its sound is better than the Quad tuner on the stereo set.
Besides that I do not like talking people on a stereo set. I never did.

[flood2]

I´m aware that, at least in theory, a wired connection is superior to bluetooth and should give better sound. Maybe, if i listened critically, I´d be able to hear that but the simple truth is that bluetooth sounds good enough to me and my 66 years old hearing. So I´ve stopped feeling guilty about using it.

Absolutely nothing wrong with BT - the modern Codecs such as LDAC and aptX-Lossless exceed the minimum requirements for CD quality (which we were assured some 40 years ago was sufficient!).
The caveat is that the signal link is reliable with few obstacles in the line of sight to ensure the required bit error rate remains below the threshold otherwise the bit errors force the CODEC to drop the maximum bit rate.
In fact on my phone I am more than happy at listening to 160kbps ABR MP3s in the car or on my BT headphones when doing the washing up so standard SBC or AAC is adequate to enjoy the music.
Not being tethered by wires is liberating!

[hatehifi]

I am in this hobby to enjoy music. The to my ears garble of MP3 is not music to my ears but BT works for me for background music served from more comprehensive data. The WiiM Ultra does imho a very good job of it.


Cheers!

[flood2]

The to my ears garble of MP3 is not music to my ears but BT works for me for background music served from more comprehensive data.
Cheers!

It depends what bitrate you are talking about and the environment - 128kbps or less in joint stereo is not great no matter what environment you are talking about. However, careful use of the different modes possible in coding can result in acceptable quality ideal for BT transmission on the road and out and about with headphones. Even in ideal listening environments, there have been tests that showed that many listeners struggled to hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and lossless redbook audio. Some audiophiles even thought MP3 to be "more musical" than the lossless version!?
In the car with all the extraneous noise and as background music whilst concentrating on the road, I find mp3 at 160kbps ABR to be quite sufficient - 160kbps ABR or VBR often equates to much higher bitrates with jazz and classical music. It means I can have my entire collection on my phone (with 512GB dedicated memory for the music). The bitrate of aptX is not much higher than max resolution mp3 at 352kbps. SBC is typically 328kbps for stereo. However, in terms of audio quality both mp3 and the various BT codecs are using similar psychoacoustic masking principles to reduce the bitrate to fit in the channel bandwidth so at the higher end of mp3 there isn't likely to be any difference. Obviously if one is at home, then I will listen to FLAC files fed directly to my DAC on my MartinLogan Summits and not use BT or introduce any other degradation to the data.