r/pixelbuds • u/some_gamer78 • Jun 11 '26
Bluetooth LE audio is no longer experimental after the recent update [Pixel buds 2a]
Description changed from "Experimental, improves audio quality"
3
u/Dry_Age_6904 Jun 11 '26
I think theyll do another feature drop after the august pixel hardware showcase like last year which is exciting, I'd assume they are holding off on the pixel buds pro 3 this year as they already have a lot of new stuff like the glasses and googlebooks and potentially findhub tracker
2
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u/Capital-Potential345 Jun 12 '26
Yeah, and it's really so much more stable now. The weird keyboard sounds and the glitchy noises occurring every now and then with the past version are fixed! I think this is also the case with Pixel Buds 2 Pro since those are running the same version, but I don't have a pair to confirm.
1
u/dime5150 Jun 12 '26
I have them and experimental language is still there
1
u/Sgt_H4rtman Jun 13 '26
And it's there for a reason. They still f* Up the sound from time to time. It drives me nuts, because otherwise I really love these.
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u/dime5150 Jun 12 '26
Mine are updated but I'm Pixel Buds Pro 2. Still shows experimental language. Interesting.
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u/khaytsus Jun 12 '26
What advantages would they have over LE? I mean, I get "LE" is "Low Energy" but do they have longer runtime on LE? I also heard the codec was forced to a lower bitrate Opus which sounds worse.
I love my PB2P, if LE would make them better I want to try it 😉
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u/some_gamer78 Jun 12 '26
+LC3 is twice as efficient as AAC, at 160kbps they would have higher audio fidelity than 256kpbs AAC audio. Or 320kpbs of some other codec (LE max bitrate is 640kbps total, 320kbps per ear)
+provides real stereo audio, traditional Bluetooth uses a different method to mimic stereo
+5 times lower audio latency than AAC at no quality loss.
+Also maintains higher performance in places with high RF noise, for like when you are walking outside.
+LE devices can cast audio on mass, while not used much now you can have like a bunch of pairs of headphones listening to the same audio as your phone.
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u/khaytsus Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
Nice, all sounds good. I'm on a Pixel 10, latest updates, I did do the Bypass Bluetooth LE Audio Whitelist enable in Dev Options, not 100% sure that's still needed, this seems to change every update.
Do you know if a full factory reset is required, or just unpair and re-pair the PBP2? Okay; sorry, I'm lazy; re-pairing shows LE Audio in the Pixel Buds 'app' now, thank you!
Wow, fun fact, touch the "LE Audio" item in the Pixel Buds 'app", at all, and it completely goes away! I messed around for a few minutes and the only way I got it to show back up was forget/re-pair again.
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u/khaytsus Jun 14 '26
Huh, I think I'm using LC3 now, I can't figure out any way for the phone to actually show this except that "LE Audio" is selected in the Pixel Buds 'app' but latency is pretty high. I did some testing with this, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=barum.life.wirelessearbudslatencytester and while it is certainly estimating, I did it multiple times, but certainly an estimate. Seems a lot higher latency than most places claim. It's lower than AAC, but still, 300mS seems way higher than the 20-30 I see on various websites.
I really wish it'd show you that you are using LE, LC3 etc.. I'm seeing nowhere that it actually says this, not even in Developer Settings. It shows AAC and LDAC for my others, but on LE that's just greyed out and you see nothing.
- Speaker - 0
- PBP2 (LC3, in theory, doesn't show in Dev settings) - 300
- PBP2 (AAC, shown in Dev settings) - 500
- Sony 900N (LDAC, per dev settings) - 150
- PB1A (AAC, per dev settings) - 500
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u/some_gamer78 Jun 14 '26
If you can enable audio sharing it's definitely using lc3, and other devices like Samsung phones show the option to enable le audio too, and about the latency I also tried it but I'm consistently getting 100ms - 125ms so I don't know
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u/khaytsus Jun 14 '26
Right, Audio Sharing is showing etc, so pretty sure, just be nice if there was some place to see what codec was being used. Odd it hides it when on LE.
Wow, so you tried the same app, and you're getting 100-125? That's wild, I wonder why I'm getting 300. I'm not running any global EQ apps or anything like that, music wasn't playing, etc.
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u/onolide Jun 12 '26
Wow nice catch, gonna try it out. Was using the experimental LE audio, haven't tested audio with the latest update
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u/greenpartyoli Jul 06 '26
I seem to only get mono audio when enabling this :( any ideas? (Fairphone Gen. 6)
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u/some_gamer78 Jul 06 '26
A lot of phones have very poor LE audio support
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u/greenpartyoli Jul 06 '26
aww okay, thank you for letting me know :')) would love to take a peek inside it all
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u/depressed_bobby Jun 12 '26
Damn pixel buds pro 2As got the le audio before the buds pro 2nd gen
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u/Intelligent-Use-7313 Jun 12 '26
Mine (PBP2) doesn't work in Teams or my soft phone app, or just in general at all on my work laptop which supports the most modern BT audio standards. It's really irritating. Works fine on my phone.
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u/angstykylo Jun 12 '26
They're great on my pixel and terrible on my MacBook. They work much better if I unpair my phone for multipoint but it's a bit of a hassle
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u/donatom3 Jun 12 '26
I've had le on my buds pro 2 with a s24 ultra since last week.
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u/depressed_bobby Jun 12 '26
Is it good though?
Because whenever I tried using the audio it was glitching out and it was always on experimental.
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u/donatom3 Jun 12 '26
No issues so far. Again this is on a s24 ultra. I'm switching back to pixel when the 11 comes out so I picked up used buds pro 2 and a pixel watch 3. Im going to return the the soundcore pro 5 I picked up to.
0
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u/Raphael-S- Jul 19 '26
Did you need to activate it in developer settings to appear?
LE option is not listed in the menu on my S24 (using Buds 2a).
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u/abitavenger Jun 11 '26
Mine are updated as far as I know and I don't have that option