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Qualcomm's aptX and aptX HD Codecs Now Part of Android Open Source Project

TheLostSwede

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One of the biggest issues with TWS and any other kind of wireless headphones for that matter, is limited support for various audio codecs, where many rely on the not so great SBC codec or AAC, simply because these are two codes that are supported by most of the devices that the headphones would be connected to. When it comes to smartphones, Qualcomm is by far the biggest chipset provider and as it happens, Qualcomm is also the owner of the various aptX audio codecs that many headphones support. Up until very recently, the phone makers had to pay a royalty fee to include support for the aptX codecs even if they used Qualcomm's chips in their phones and thus some companies—Samsung for example—decided not to include support for aptX.

Now it has come to light that just like Sony with its LDAC codec, Qualcomm has decided to add support for aptX to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which means all Android devices can support aptX as well as aptX HD without paying any royalty fees. However, more advanced versions of aptX, such as aptX Adaptive and the rarely used low latency version of aptX are not included. That said, headphone makers will still have to pay a royalty fee to Qualcomm, although there doesn't appear to be any headphones on the market that support aptX that aren't based on a Qualcomm or one of the older CSR chipsets from the time before Qualcomm acquired them. On the other hand, Sony's LDAC codec is used by a wide range of headphones, of which none rely on a Sony chipset. Regardless, this should be good news for consumers, who will be the ones reaping the benefits from this change in the long term.



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I don't get it why no one ever tried incorporating Opus codec that's royalty free, and also very efficient.
quality.png
 
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Pan

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Hopefully Samsung devices get Aptx now.
 
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... and let the CVEs roll in.

I don't understand why Google is still accepting vendor blobs for media processing.
 

TheLostSwede

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You don't quite expect Qualcomm to open their driver stack, do you?

Well, I have a quite negative opinion of Qualcomm. I consider the presence of their binary blobs in Android phones a major disadvantage of the entire platform. Apple doesn't have to deal with that.
 
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Well, I have a quite negative opinion of Qualcomm. I consider the presence of their binary blobs in Android phones a major disadvantage of the entire platform. Apple doesn't have to deal with that.
Whaaat! Apple's entire ecosystem is as closed-source as it gets!
 
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Whaaat! Apple's entire ecosystem is as closed-source as it gets!
Yes but they are all their own binaries, they don't have to deal with being stuck to the same old kernel version or being unable to update to a newer android version, because qualcomm didn't update their driver.

Linux and by extension android works best if all drivers are part of it and thus open source. This mostly works fine on the desktop / server space (ignoring nvidia which at least tries to remain compatible)
 
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You don't quite expect Qualcomm to open their driver stack, do you?
Did they shift the bulk of the propriety AptX technology into a binary blob in the driver and what’s left is an open source shim to userland space?
 
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Yes but they are all their own binaries, they don't have to deal with being stuck to the same old kernel version or being unable to update to a newer android version, because qualcomm didn't update their driver.

Linux and by extension android works best if all drivers are part of it and thus open source. This mostly works fine on the desktop / server space (ignoring nvidia which at least tries to remain compatible)

That's only a problem if interfaces with the blob change, of course not ideal but it works well enough. And for that matter Apple as exactly the same problem for the time being since they're still buying their modems from Qualcomm
 
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