And also no latency. Even expensive Bluetooth headphones and earbuds have crap latency. The systems that don’t are either proprietary and not widely supported (e.g. aptX) or expensive 'phones-and-dongle arrangements that must always travel in a pair and still don’t compete on latency with a pair of dollar store earbuds.
Unless you’re using them for gaming or some other interactive medium, latency doesn’t really matter though. For music, latency is irrelevant and for video, your device will take care of syncing the audio and video playback so it’s a non issue. Audio quality is an entirely different matter of course.
Your video player “can” account for latency if you configure it correctly which I imagine the majority of people don’t do, and simply put up with it. Ditto with your music playback always lagging 1-2 seconds behind your control inputs. I have never used a media player on any platform that automatically figured out audio latency. Maybe the iDevices do if you pair them with Airpods, I don’t know; I don’t own anything Apple and I never will.
It also matters for music production, and makes life a lot more pleasant for audio/video editing. Plus, latency is just annoying in any setting.
Your video player “can” account for latency if you configure it correctly which I imagine the majority of people don’t do.
Windows and Android do this automatically out of the box, don’t know about other platforms.
Ditto with your music playback always lagging 1-2 seconds behind your control inputs.
Since music isn’t an interactive medium, this doesn’t really matter (also the latency is more like 100 to 500 ms depending on a variety of factors)
It also matters for music production, and makes life a lot more pleasant for audio/video editing
Well of course, if you’re doing that A) this is not an application for wireless audio solutions so…uh…duh and B) you’re probably not on a phone if you take it seriously? 😅
Yes indeed, Apple’s had acceptable latency (e.g. for YouTube) since no later than 2017.
I’ve only thought about it when specifically wondering how they pulled it off (and I assumed the phone did something slightly fancy to add a delay on the visual side)
I don’t know about iPhone, but I’ve notice a cool trick that my Android uses is, immediately upon unpausing a video, it will play and jump the video to the point it will need to be to sync the audio, so while you may skip a few frames initially, you do receive immediate visual feedback rather than seeing a frozen frame while waiting for the audio delay.
I can find over 600 aptX capable headphones as well as over 850 phones, also any laptop I ever had supported it (Linux though, so probably not always “official” lol).
Low latency is a thing, you can get this as low as ~30-50ms either through aptX LL / Adaptive, whatever the manufacturer apps do or by manually meddling with the settings for SBC. Will get rather unstable though since you effectively get rid of the buffer. Really depends on your usecase what you prefer.
Personally I love having ANC headphones that support bluetooth but also got a headphone jack in cases where I sit in trains, buses or planes for hours and want to play some games or listen to music with a DAC.
Might plug into the car to get higher quality audio. Will use a cable with a mic at home, but even then I might use AirPods for listening and only use the cable to speak into.
It stands to reason there can’t be that many audiophiles who could tell the difference between Bluetooth and aux while listening to their little Spotify playlists, but oh boy-
So many more people can tell when you’re speaking over spanking-new $200 AirPods versus the old dinky pair of stock EarPods from the bottom of the junk drawer. Cable reins supreme, no competition. (and with the best dictation software, simply whispering into the hardwired mic is sufficient for ~95(+)% accuracy)
And also no latency. Even expensive Bluetooth headphones and earbuds have crap latency. The systems that don’t are either proprietary and not widely supported (e.g. aptX) or expensive 'phones-and-dongle arrangements that must always travel in a pair and still don’t compete on latency with a pair of dollar store earbuds.
If you’re listening to podcasts or music, latency doesn’t really matter.
Unless you’re using them for gaming or some other interactive medium, latency doesn’t really matter though. For music, latency is irrelevant and for video, your device will take care of syncing the audio and video playback so it’s a non issue. Audio quality is an entirely different matter of course.
Your video player “can” account for latency if you configure it correctly which I imagine the majority of people don’t do, and simply put up with it. Ditto with your music playback always lagging 1-2 seconds behind your control inputs. I have never used a media player on any platform that automatically figured out audio latency. Maybe the iDevices do if you pair them with Airpods, I don’t know; I don’t own anything Apple and I never will.
It also matters for music production, and makes life a lot more pleasant for audio/video editing. Plus, latency is just annoying in any setting.
Windows and Android do this automatically out of the box, don’t know about other platforms.
Since music isn’t an interactive medium, this doesn’t really matter (also the latency is more like 100 to 500 ms depending on a variety of factors)
Well of course, if you’re doing that A) this is not an application for wireless audio solutions so…uh…duh and B) you’re probably not on a phone if you take it seriously? 😅
Yes indeed, Apple’s had acceptable latency (e.g. for YouTube) since no later than 2017.
I’ve only thought about it when specifically wondering how they pulled it off (and I assumed the phone did something slightly fancy to add a delay on the visual side)
Glad you’ve never paid their tax in any case!
I don’t know about iPhone, but I’ve notice a cool trick that my Android uses is, immediately upon unpausing a video, it will play and jump the video to the point it will need to be to sync the audio, so while you may skip a few frames initially, you do receive immediate visual feedback rather than seeing a frozen frame while waiting for the audio delay.
I can find over 600 aptX capable headphones as well as over 850 phones, also any laptop I ever had supported it (Linux though, so probably not always “official” lol).
Low latency is a thing, you can get this as low as ~30-50ms either through aptX LL / Adaptive, whatever the manufacturer apps do or by manually meddling with the settings for SBC. Will get rather unstable though since you effectively get rid of the buffer. Really depends on your usecase what you prefer. Personally I love having ANC headphones that support bluetooth but also got a headphone jack in cases where I sit in trains, buses or planes for hours and want to play some games or listen to music with a DAC.
Almost always Bluetooth for me.
Might plug into the car to get higher quality audio. Will use a cable with a mic at home, but even then I might use AirPods for listening and only use the cable to speak into.
It stands to reason there can’t be that many audiophiles who could tell the difference between Bluetooth and aux while listening to their little Spotify playlists, but oh boy-
So many more people can tell when you’re speaking over spanking-new $200 AirPods versus the old dinky pair of stock EarPods from the bottom of the junk drawer. Cable reins supreme, no competition. (and with the best dictation software, simply whispering into the hardwired mic is sufficient for ~95(+)% accuracy)