What is the difference (in terms of music format) between a wireless headphone vs. a wired one? The information that they receive is the same?
In: Technology
Well it’s not the same.
A wired connection can transfer data more efficiently and quickly than a wireless one.
To make up for this, a wireless headphone has to have that data compressed before receiving it.
That compression degrades the quality of the music data, leading to “worse” sounding music.
This is of course a bit subjective as most people don’t use the highest quality files to begin with and probably would never notice the difference.
There are different compression methods formats.
The most popular being
* SBC (Most basic and worst of them)
* AAC
* Aptx
* Aptx HD
* LDAC (proprietary sony format and considered the best)
For Android users, all android phones running 8.0 or higher can output LDAC but you do need a receiver or headphones which are compatible with the format
Wired headphones are just speakers attached to wires, which are attached to a jack connector. They recieve a power-amplified signal from a power amplifier.
Wireless headphones recieve audio over radio waves, which don’t have enough energy to drive speakers. For this reason all wireless headphones contain a power amplifier to drive the speakers. If the audio signal over the radio link is digital, it will be decompressed (if it is compressed) and converted to analog by a digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
Assuming the source is a music app running on a phone, the most common setups nowadays are:
**Wired**
Music app -> codec in phone to decompress -> DAC in phone to convert to analog -> power amplifier in phone to drive headphones -> headphone jack -> headphone cable -> headphone speakers
**Wireless**
Music app-> transcoder to convert to different compressed format usable by headphones -> encoding for sending over wireless link -> radio baseband -> radio modulator -> radio power amplifier -> radio transmitter antenna in phone -> air -> radio antenna in headphones -> radio receiver preamp -> radio demodulator -> error correction for corruption in transmission -> decompression of digital audio -> audio DAC to convert to analog audio -> power amplifier to drive speakers -> headphone speakers.
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