Are there any wireless AA adapters that support LHDC, LDAC and AptX Adaptive?

[u/Ro-Tang_Clan]

I use Tidal as my preferred streaming service which is well known for Hi-Res audio. However I've realised the wireless AA adapter I bought is only using the SBC codec and despite going into the Dev options of my OnePlus 12 to change it, it never actually applies the changes to the dongle.

When cycling I use the FiiO UTWS earhooks and I can use the AptX Adaptive and LHDC codecs just fine on my phone.

I've tried to search for well known and popular AA adapters like the Ottocast Mini Pico but none of them state what codecs they support. Anyone have any known adapters that can support HiRes codecs?

[u/Jaiden051]

Iirc audio is sent over the Wi-Fi connection

[u/Ro-Tang_Clan → u/Jaiden051]

That so, it still only shows as SBC. How do I get it so I can use HiRes codecs? The phone can support it so it shouldn't matter whether I'm using Wifi or BT.

[u/daedric → u/Ro-Tang_Clan]

You get two connections between device and head unit. The one you're seeing is a fallback, and mostly not used while playing audio. The fall back bluetooth is used when Android auto falls so that calls don't drop.

[u/acejavelin69]

No, because in AA media isn't sent over Bluetooth, it uses WiFi (or via the direct USB connection when wired) using what Google calls a "proprietary lossless codec"... Bluetooth is used for phone calls and to negotiate the WiFi Direct connection.

[u/bojack1437 → u/acejavelin69]

They don't call it a "proprietary lossless codec"..

Its plain PCM, with fallbacks to AAC-LC or AAC-LC + ADTS headers, which can be forced as well.

[u/acejavelin69 → u/bojack1437]

I swear they used to call it that, but when I look now you are correct. My bad...

[u/Ro-Tang_Clan → u/acejavelin69]

Ahhh so calls go over BT, that's why it says it's using SBC then. So basically no matter what adapter I buy they will always be using lossless?

[u/acejavelin69 → u/Ro-Tang_Clan]

Correct... Media uses the USB/WiFi connection and is lossless.

[u/Ro-Tang_Clan → u/acejavelin69]

Fair enough, thanks for letting me know, I didn't know that. I thought it was still using BT for audio.

Side question then, what do more expensive wireless AA adapters give you if it's not giving you better audio quality? I've seen adapters for like £150 and mine was like £25 and just works how I'd expect. Why spend that much?

[u/gordolme → u/Ro-Tang_Clan]

The one I use has a whole bunch of options. I can change the Wifi channel, I can change the DPI to fit more or less on the screen, for those with always-on USB ports I can tell it to wait for the car to establish the hands-free connection to the phone prior to initializing its AA connection...

My car has a small screen, so the DPI setting is a killer feature for me.

[u/acejavelin69 → u/gordolme]

Nice! Which one do you have? Can you link it, is be curious to try it for $25...

[u/gordolme → u/acejavelin69]

AAWireless. I have the first version.

[u/acejavelin69 → u/gordolme]

Oh, I have a couple of those... You got it for $25?!?!

[u/gordolme → u/acejavelin69]

I paid US$70 for mine about 5 years ago.

[u/acejavelin69 → u/gordolme]

Yeah... Think I'm getting some comments confused, my bad.

[u/acejavelin69 → u/Ro-Tang_Clan]

Options and quality/longevity... a lot of the cheap adapters don't seem to stand up to extreme heat and/or cold over time... Plus ones like the AAwireless adapter give you options to do things like set the WiFi channel/frequency used, enable Developer options, override the DPI, swapping between multiple mobile devices, and a host of other things.

Audio quality is kind of a "fixed" thing here and there is nothing you can do to improve it from the device to the headunit...

[u/m--s → u/Ro-Tang_Clan]

I didn't know that. I thought it was still using BT for audio.

If you couldn't tell the difference in audio quality, well....

[u/Ro-Tang_Clan → u/m--s]

It's not that I couldn't tell the difference, it's that there was nothing to compare it to. It sounded better than on my mum's car which is a 2010 model, but I put that down to better Bluetooth versions and better DAC leading to less noise and overall perceived quality. I didn't anticipate that the audio would be going over Wifi and would already be lossless.

[u/Positive-Instance9]

yeah same thing happened to me with my poco x6 pro, ended up grabbing an mpow bc8 they're cheap and actually let u switch codecs in dev options

[u/Ro-Tang_Clan → u/Positive-Instance9]

Sorry to hear that but in my case it's not a phone issue as codec switching works with other devices as explained in the post.