So long dropouts, Qualcomm brings Wi-Fi audio to earbuds

With Bluetooth having reached its bandwidth limitations and the headphone jack largely disappearing from our telephones, music lovers have been left looking for lossless choices for headphone use. Fortunately, Qualcomm has added a characteristic to its latest cell chips to get audiophiles what they need from wi-fi audio: Snapdragon Sound.

What’s Snapdragon Sound?

Snapdragon Sound encompasses Qualcomm’s lossless wi-fi audio platform. Its first iteration requires a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or later processor and a corresponding chipset in your headphones or earbuds to make use of the aptX Adaptive suite and the aptX Lossless codec. That is vital as a result of aptX Lossless is at present the primary Bluetooth audio codec that may reportedly present bit-exact CD-quality sound.

With its new Snapdragon S7 and S7 Professional chips for wi-fi earbuds, the Snapdragon Sound platform additionally consists of what Qualcomm calls Expanded Private Space Community expertise — XPAN, for brief. In a nutshell, XPAN seamlessly switches your audio stream between Bluetooth and your own home Wi-Fi community when needed, with out consumer enter.

Why is XPAN such an enormous deal?

The primary apparent profit to XPAN is you could depart your cellphone anyplace in your house and proceed streaming in your Wi-Fi community — to locations conventional Bluetooth wouldn’t attain. Second, Qualcomm says Wi-Fi will robotically have interaction to playback lossless content material (as much as 24-bit, 96kHz initially), leaving Bluetooth because the default for calls and lossy music the place it’s finest served. Lastly, Wi-Fi opens the door to sub-50ms latency even with high-quality audio enabled — a boon for avid gamers eager for wi-fi audio freedom. To attain these latencies with Bluetooth, you would need to make a tradeoff in high quality, which isn’t the case with this new system.

Wi-Fi audio streaming isn’t new, in fact. It’s been a staple of network-attached audio system for years, enabling lossless playback all through your own home. However it’s brand-spanking-new for earbuds and headphones as a result of Wi-Fi has historically been too power-hungry for the tiny batteries packed into these little earbuds. Bluetooth playback has been the go-to selection as a result of it’s well-supported, and the radios can run for a lot of hours, even on tiny cells.

Bluetooth’s trade-off is that it’s comparatively low bandwidth — passable for lossless audio however not for lossless playback. Numerous codec builders have taken nice pains to push the usual’s bandwidth to maximise audio high quality (comparable to LDAC, LDHC, and Qualcomm’s personal AptX Lossless implementation). However even these high-end choices require a scalable, lossless fallback for less-than-ideal radio circumstances.

Why didn’t we have now Wi-Fi headphones already?

This hasn’t grow to be commonplace prior to now as a result of Qualcomm needed to remedy the Wi-Fi energy drawback. The Wi-Fi radio connected to its Snapdragon S7 Professional chip (the common S7 doesn’t characteristic XPAN) runs at micro-power ranges, making hours of playback attainable. The truth is, Qualcomm claims that its Wi-Fi answer makes use of much less energy than Bluetooth when streaming equal audio. Qualcomm quotes that its earlier Snapdragon S5 platform may muster 10 hours of 48kHz lossless playback whereas the S7 Professional survives the identical time taking part in 96kHz lossless content material — a recreation changer.

So what’s the catch? Whereas Qualcomm isn’t counting on proprietary Bluetooth or Wi-Fi expertise for XPAN, it has some secret supply in its Snapdragon Sound software program suite and Wi-Fi {hardware} elements that make this all work. As such, you’ll want a playback machine (comparable to an awesome smartphone for audio) powered by a brand new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and earbuds sporting the brand new Snapdragon S7 Professional chip. These are each anticipated to seem in the marketplace in 2024, and this requirement clearly excludes Apple’s units from participating. Qualcomm says others may deploy related applied sciences, however that would take years.

What else does Snapdragon Sound allow?

XPAN and residential Wi-Fi audio are simply a part of Qualcomm’s imaginative and prescient for next-gen wi-fi audio experiences. The 2 Snapdragon S7 chips sport quite a few enhancements spanning well-established ANC to cutting-edge AI.

Qualcomm touts a 100x efficiency enchancment in AI use circumstances due to its first devoted NPU in an audio chip. The low-power unit allows AI options comparable to background voice rejection for improved calls, customized sound profiles, and superior environmental evaluation for context-aware energetic noise cancelation (ANC).

Talking of ANC, Qualcomm’s fourth-generation expertise helps adaptive ANC power and blended transparency for higher customization, a brand new low-latency mic-to-speaker sign path, and even listening to loss compensation to blur the road between hearables and earbuds. Throw in Bluetooth 5.4 with LE Audio and Auracast help, and we’re taking a look at a cutting-edge wi-fi audio package deal.

Will your subsequent headphones have Snapdragon Sound?

Sadly, Qualcomm’s earlier audio options haven’t but discovered mass market adoption — however the audio business strikes slowly. It took about 5 years for USB-C audio to choose up steam, in spite of everything, so this is perhaps one other occasion of smartphone tech outpacing obtainable audio merchandise. Qualcomm’s web site solely lists the Bose QuietComfort Extremely Earbuds, QuietComfort Extremely Headphones, and Denon Perl Professional for family manufacturers packing Snapdragon Sound. The advantages of XPAN ought to encourage extra producers aboard, however market forces are fickle.

Trendy earbuds and headphones are already very profitable with out really lossless audio, however we don’t see game-changing new audio options come alongside too often. XPAN sounds revolutionary, and we anticipate to see it in merchandise someday in 2024. We’ll should see how a lot customers pays for the privilege.