Audio has gone through a mobile renaissance in the past few years. The number of companies developing technology to enable lossless, audiophile-quality sound has drastically increased. Just this year, services like Apple Music, Spotify and TIDAL have started offering spatial and lossless music on their services. Now, Qualcomm is looking to complete the experience with high fidelity, lossless sound over Bluetooth with their new aptX Lossless. This new Lossless standard will come built-in to the aptX Adaptive standard.
Qualcomm’s aptX Lossless come as part of their Snapdragon Sound Technology which looks to up the ante when it comes to sound on mobile devices. The new standard will allow users to experience lossless CD-quality sound. Qualcomm claims that the new technology in the aptX Adaptive standard will produce high quality, lossless audio which will be mathematically bit-for-bit exact.
Qualcomm isn’t just revealing another standard with aptX Lossless, the technology behind it will also be ensuring better connectivity while streaming lossless audio. AptX Adaptive will work in tandem with Qualcomm Bluetooth High Speed Link technology to deliver sustainable bitrates to support lossless audio. Using these technologies simultaneously, Qualcomm is able to deliver data rates beyond 1Mbps yet seamlessly scale down to 140kbps in more congested RF environments. This helps minimize any dropouts or glitches for a more reliable listening experience.
While the technology sounds promising, we will only be seeing aptX Lossless capable devices become commercially available in 2022. It may still be a little bit before we see the aptX Lossless standard become ubiquitous. That said, we’re looking at a growing demand for lossless audio among consumers with technologies like Spatial sound and 360 Audio becoming more mainstream.
