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Did you know that Bluetooth audio has been mostly unchanged since 2003?

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I mean, this was three years before Spotify launched and four years before we even got the first iPod.

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And while I'm sure you have a pair of Bluetooth headphones or a wireless speaker, you absolutely love.

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There are actually quite a few shortcomings in the Bluetooth spec most of us know and love.

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But huge changes are just around the corner as Android 13 is including support for Bluetooth LE audio

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with the LE standing for low energy.

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Admittedly, the name isn't particularly exciting.

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Please clap. Low energy might make you think of a laptop CPU

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that's advertised as being super power efficient, but also frustratingly slow.

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But Bluetooth LE audio promises to be better in every way.

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Let's start out with the biggest concern for most average users, battery life.

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Although the companies that make wireless headphones and speakers try and make long battery life

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a major selling point, the fact is that they're all using the same outdated

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and inefficient Bluetooth classic protocol to receive audio signals.

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It's actually inefficient enough to have a significant impact on power consumption,

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both on your headphones and your phone. But how does Bluetooth LE use less energy?

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At the heart of the new protocol is the LC3 codec.

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And if you don't know what a codec is, it's just a piece of software

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that encodes or decodes audio signals so they can be sent out in a compressed form

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to save on power and bandwidth. LC3 uses a new compression algorithm

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that allows for higher quality audio at a lower bit rate,

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meaning less data will be transmitted resulting in lower power consumption

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without compromising on sound. Sounds too good to be true, and it almost is.

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But this doesn't mean Bluetooth LE is suddenly going to deliver audio

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that matches a lossless experience with wired headphones.

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It should be a noticeable improvement over the current codec, SBC.

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Although there already are higher quality codecs available for Android, like your Crazy X,

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they have their own issues. AAC, famously used by Apple devices,

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has quality and battery consumption problems on Android,

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go figure, and LDAC and Aptix from Sony and Qualcomm respectively are, well, proprietary.

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So if a headphone maker wants to support these, they have to pay extra for a license,

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meaning not only are they harder to find, they're also more expensive for consumers.

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By contrast, LC3 is a required part

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of the Bluetooth low energy spec moving forward, so support for it should be much broader.

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Even though having multiple speakers or headphones play the same thing from one source

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is relatively easy to do with a wired setup, there hasn't really been a good, not proprietary way

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to do this over Bluetooth so far. That's changing with Bluetooth LE audio,

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thanks to a feature called AuraCast. This should support use cases as simple

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as two people trying to listen to the same song on separate headphones,

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to hundreds of people receiving announcements at an airport they might otherwise miss

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because they're listening to Spotify. We might even see places like gyms

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and sports bars adding AuraCast to allow people to listen to the TV of their choice,

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which might otherwise be muted, as picking an AuraCast source on your phone

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should be just as easy as selecting a Wi-Fi network.

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And if you're watching this video on a Bluetooth speaker, you might notice that the words you hear

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are a little out of sync with my mouth. Bluetooth LE should also help address this

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because it has lower latency, especially important if you'd like to use

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Bluetooth audio for gaming. Combine all this with better performance over distance,

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more accurate stereo sound, thanks to each earbud getting its own audio stream,

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and even support for spatial or surround sound without needing any special software.

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And Bluetooth LE audio should, at the very least,

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make wireless audio less of a pain. And it's supposed to be simpler than a tangle of wires.

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How did this happen? And how did this video end so quickly?

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Oh well, like it if you liked it. Dislike it if you dislike it.

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Check out our other videos and comment below with video suggestions. And don't you forget to subscribe and follow.

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You almost did this time. Don't.