This isn't as noticeable now as it was in the early days of the format, thanks to better encoders, higher bit rates and more, but sometimes you can still tell the difference even on the cheapest headphones. Compressed audio, in theory, sounds worse than the uncompressed version of the same song. These codecs are called 'lossy,' as the sound removed is lost, and can't be recovered. The trade-off for convenience is quality. The Sennheiser Momentum 3 Wireless is another aptX-compatible high-end headphone. That's a 10x decrease, with a corresponding decrease in file size. MP3s, for instance, are often around 1MB per minute. These ' codecs,' a portmanteau of compression/decompression, remove what you theoretically can't hear using a method called ' psychoacoustic modeling.' This lets them reduce the size of the audio files or streams significantly. Hence the ubiquity of compressed audio, like AAC and MP3. It'd also chew through your mobile data if you were to stream it. While that isn't a lot of data these days, it's still a lot more than what's easily transmittable between a portable device and Bluetooth headphones. That 16-bit/44kHz rate of CD equates to about 10 megabytes per minute for stereo, or over a megabit per second. So in other words, there are 44,100 snapshots per second, and each snapshot has one of 65,536 potential values. The audio on a CD has 44,100 samples every second, and each sample has a value of somewhere between 0 and 65,535 (also called '16-bit'). With enough of these snapshots, or 'samples,' a playback device (an iPhone, say) can convert them back into a smooth sound wave.

Instead of a steady wave of sound, it's a series of snapshots.

Read more: The best headphones of 2020 Bluetooth audio: A quick primerĭigital audio is a collection of samples of what a sound wave looks like at a specific moment in time. It can have other benefits, though, so it's definitely worth learning about.īut before we can explain aptX, we need to talk about Bluetooth itself.

That doesn't mean it's not potentially useful, just that it doesn't necessarily mean there's much, if any, audible improvement. In the early days of Bluetooth, aptX got a lot of attention due to its potential for far higher quality compared to the stock Bluetooth transmission.īluetooth technology has come a long way in the last decade or so - it's currently in its version 5 iteration - and as such, aptX isn't the panacea it once seemed. If you're the type of person who loves to scrutinize speaker and headphone feature lists, you've likely come across aptX hyped as an improvement in quality for the audio transmission between your source, like a phone or tablet, and your headphones or speakers. The Bowers & Wilkins P7 wireless headphones support aptX - but only when the source device does, too.

Bluetooth enhancer