Wireless Headphones Battle & Knowledge dump

cloneman · February 6, 2017

I'm a bit obsessed with wireless headphones so I thought I would do a small knowledge dump and probe for recommendations and experiences. This is all the stuff I know, or am reasonably certain of.

Types

1. Standard Bluetooth SBC Codec headphones (ex. Jaybird X , X2, Plantronics backbeat Fit)

Advantages:

- Compatible with many devices. SBC Codec @ max quality (300kbps or more) is underrated and has adequate quality for non-audiophiles.

- For me, they sound as good as 50$ wired IEMs at least.

- Some smartphone Apps compensate for latency by slowing down the video. They treat the bluetooth device as a "cast" device. Youtube does this; but not netflix.

- many compact products available

- range can be slightly improved with USB extension cables and USB BT dongles

Disavantages:

- There is some latency which may disrupt video watching or real-time gaming. It varies from device to device.

- No transmitter required (optional)

- Range is typically not good - because most of these are Class 2 bluetooth devices. 30 feet with a good phone in open area, 2 rooms in a home. Bad transmitters/antennas which are very common, especially in desktops and low-cost bluetooth transmitters can reduce effective range to less than 15ft.

- The Windows default and broadcom Bluetooth stack is trash. it doesn't let you control bitrate and defaults to some shitty one. You need to hack on the toshiba BT software

- You can't use Stereo Audio + Builtin Mic at the same time. When using the Mic, it falls back to very low quality audio.

- pairing can be frustrating

- Latency can be worse on computer Bluetooth (dongles & integrated) versus phones or dedicated Bluetooth transmitters - bad design with too much buffering.

2. APT-X, APT-X Low-Latency, and AptX HD (ex. Mpow swift headphones)

Read the SBC Section (1). These devices are almost the same as standard bluetooth, with the following differences

Advantages

- Theoretically is better designed protocol that is almost lossless with slightly less latency (aptx) or at least higher quality than SBC with "much less latency" (apt-x LL)

- relatively inexpensive products available like mpow swift that are backwards compatible with SBC for unsupported devices

- Mac OS supports APT-X , you have to mess around to get it detected sometimes

Disadvantages

- A lot of hard to find products, hard to find reviews. Since many BT products have shitty range, having to choose between only 1 or 2 transmitters could be a dead end.

- aptx-LL products are rare

- Not supported by many devices. Pure Google Phones (Nexus, Pixel) and iOS (iPhone , iPad) do not support Apt-X at all, and these are the best mobile platforms arguably. Have to use an external AptX transmitter with toslink or digital USB input. Some phones support it out of the box but then you're locked to Samsung TouchWiz or other bad software

- No one has created hacks to enable apt-x with Jailbreaking or Rooting afaik.
- Not many Windows Bluetooth dongles that support Apt-x. No one has created a software to hack on apt-x to regular bluetooth dongles in Windows.

3. Apple W1 (I don't know much about this, and neither does anyone else)

- Apple's new W1 stuff theoretically use AAC which should provide better quality than SBC, and makes pairing easier.

- Extended Range probably only works with the iphone 7 right now

- Some full-size headphones with W1 (like the PowerBeats 3) allegedly have great range due to being a Class 1 "100 meter" product.

https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/apple-w1-chip-how-it-works/

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/10/first-look-apples-powerbeats-3-bluetooth-headphones-with-w1-chip-and-12-hour-battery-life

4. Proprietary Wireless

Sennheiser RS 175 & RS 185

Advantages:

- "100 meter" range - definitely better than bluetooth

- "lossless" unconfirmed, but defintiely higher bitrate than bluetooth

- "low latency" - designed for TV

- Can pair multiple devices to one base ( maybe ?)

- loud

Disadvantages:

- expensive (never comes on sale in Canada and few stores keep them in stock. I tried the RS 175 and I don't like how they sound out of the box.)

- large base

- Toslink and Analog inputs only, No USB input.

Steelseries H (and possibly Siberia 840)

Advantages:

- Great product reviewed by linus. Low Latency. Slightly better range than most Bluetooth products. Decent bitrate?

- Dongle can be used with USB extension cable to position it better to improve range

- Swappable Batteries

Disadvantages:
- Doesn't get very loud for pumping music at "fun" levels

- Expensive

SteelSeries Arctis 7

Similar to Steelseries H (?) Better microphone, less inputs, no hot swap battery, less expensive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/steelseries/comments/58bz04/arctis_7_vs_siberia_840_affordable_vs_flagship/?st=iytzogr7&sh=d73e7909

Other Products

900Mhz, FM, and other Analog technolgies

Advantages:

- very low latency (perfect?)

- inexpensive, easy to justify for TV/Video use, given Bluetooth's range and latency problems.

- decent volume?

- probably sounds better than some mediocre bluetooth stacks (e.g. Windows)

Disadvantages

- lower quality than most of the other options.

- static , which I guess is better than dropped connections

- less secure

Upcoming: Bluetooth 5.0

"with more bandwith"

Same range (?) for non BLE devices?

not supported by anything yet

Then there's this mysterious product:

https://www.amazon.ca/Bluetooth-Receiver-Amplifier-Class-Black/dp/B00JUGSUQG

Which claims to use Class 1 Bluetooth with Apt-X , for 100 meter range, and a built in headphone amplifier. Really tempting, but not much info out there. If I used it, I would have to find a Class 1 Bluetooth transmitter with toslink input that supports APT-X (where am I gonna find that?). I'm scared of going down the USB - Windows dongle rabbit hole. With SBC, my Bluetooth experience with windows is that bluetooth can "fall behind" unlike with dedicated Bluetooth transmitters that probably have a smaller buffer (speculation)