Is high quality Bluetooth audio broken on the Pixel 4 / 4XL?

[SupraLB]

If the pixel 4 best effort is the same as the 3 then soundguys tested it as worse than SBC, so this is not a good thing.

I read that as well, but in testing my ears it was not true. In the Sony app, you can set the headphones to 'Priority on Stable connection" and it changes to SBC and it sounds like garbage.

One thing I just tried last night is Amazon Music HD. Didn't know it existed, but sounds far better than Spotify, especially the Ultra HD songs.
Bitrates and sample rates for the three tiers of Amazon Music HD:

SD — Bitrate: 320 Kbps
HD — Bitrate: average of 850 Kbps; Sample rate: 16-bit/44kHz
Ultra HD — Bitrate: average of 3,730 kbps; Sample rate: up to 24-bit/192kHz

Give it a try with their 30 day free trial. $12.99/month after for Prime members.

 

[Mike Dee]

I read that as well, but in testing my ears it was not true. In the Sony app, you can set the headphones to 'Priority on Stable connection" and it changes to SBC and it sounds like garbage.

One thing I just tried last night is Amazon Music HD. Didn't know it existed, but sounds far better than Spotify, especially the Ultra HD songs.
Bitrates and sample rates for the three tiers of Amazon Music HD:

SD — Bitrate: 320 Kbps
HD — Bitrate: average of 850 Kbps; Sample rate: 16-bit/44kHz
Ultra HD — Bitrate: average of 3,730 kbps; Sample rate: up to 24-bit/192kHz

Give it a try with their 30 day free trial. $12.99/month after for Prime members.

It's a shame bluetooth connections are so easily disrupted

 

[neil74]

What do your ears tell you?
I dont know what Pixel 4 sounds like, but I had the 3XL when it first came out along with the WH1000XM3 and the sound was pretty good, not as good as my wired headset, but good considering it was bluetooth. I currently use the WH1000XM3s with the Note10+ and S10+ and the sound is excellent....I'll try them hardwired later because I don't have a dongle with me for a comparison.

It could be confirmation bias but my ears tell me that the sound is not as good as my P30 Pro playing the same files.

 

[neil74]

I read that as well, but in testing my ears it was not true. In the Sony app, you can set the headphones to 'Priority on Stable connection" and it changes to SBC and it sounds like garbage.

One thing I just tried last night is Amazon Music HD. Didn't know it existed, but sounds far better than Spotify, especially the Ultra HD songs.
Bitrates and sample rates for the three tiers of Amazon Music HD:

SD — Bitrate: 320 Kbps
HD — Bitrate: average of 850 Kbps; Sample rate: 16-bit/44kHz
Ultra HD — Bitrate: average of 3,730 kbps; Sample rate: up to 24-bit/192kHz

Give it a try with their 30 day free trial. $12.99/month after for Prime members.

Amazon Music is pretty good, I do not like the album management though, specifically adding manual playlists adds the album for EVERY track in that playlist and just spams the album view. Apple music does this do.

 

[SupraLB]

Amazon Music is pretty good, I do not like the album management though, specifically adding manual playlists adds the album for EVERY track in that playlist and just spams the album view. Apple music does this do.

Yeah, albums and the interface is very simplistic. However, I'm leaning towards switching to Amazon Music HD full time and dumping Spotify. Sound quality so much better. Nearly every song I look for is HD, and everything recent or a classic album is Ultra. Plus, I love how the song lyrics are far better implemented than Spotify.

Only thing Spotify has that I might miss is the crossfade function. I rather songs in my playlist blend for a few seconds rather than the cold ending, wait, then next song. Great for parties or when friends are over.

 

[neil74]

Yeah, albums and the interface is very simplistic. However, I'm leaning towards switching to Amazon Music HD full time and dumping Spotify. Sound quality so much better. Nearly every song I look for is HD, and everything recent or a classic album is Ultra. Plus, I love how the song lyrics are far better implemented than Spotify.

Only thing Spotify has that I might miss is the crossfade function. I rather songs in my playlist blend for a few seconds rather than the cold ending, wait, then next song. Great for parties or when friends are over.

I think the sound quality on Spotify is very inconsistent even for a non-hifi service. I saw a report somewhere saying that when they moved from 192 to 328 that they upscaled some of the older files rather than re-encoded from the master.

 

[subguy812]

Yeah, albums and the interface is very simplistic. However, I'm leaning towards switching to Amazon Music HD full time and dumping Spotify. Sound quality so much better. Nearly every song I look for is HD, and everything recent or a classic album is Ultra. Plus, I love how the song lyrics are far better implemented than Spotify.

Only thing Spotify has that I might miss is the crossfade function. I rather songs in my playlist blend for a few seconds rather than the cold ending, wait, then next song. Great for parties or when friends are over.

I agree the sound quality of Amazon music is better than Spotify. The price for Prime members also makes it a much better deal than Tidal, for like quality. The collection of music is more than adequate as well. Qobuz dropped their annual price and now it is cheaper than Tidal. The only big problem to me with Amazon being able to save by artist. It is so simple with every other streaming service. I am not much of a playlist guy, I know the artists I love and scroll through the list on other streaming services until I find what I want to listen to. Amazon is very playlist driven.

I do think that Tidal and Spotify both do a better job of creating playlists from music you have listened to and titling them your playlist #1(Jazz featured) or playlist #2(Rock focused), Playlist for the Year etc..

 

[neil74]

Just a slight bump, exactly the same issue on the OnePlus 7 pro. No idea what the OP chooses for best effort though.

 

[neil74]

Seems to be fixed with the March update on the Pixel. Both balanced and focus on audio quality are working now.

 

[Mike Dee]

Seems to be fixed with the March update on the Pixel. Both balanced and focus on audio quality are working now.

Are you getting full LDAC bitrate?

 

[neil74]

Yes I seem to be, I switched from Best Effort to Full quality the playback paused briefly as the switch was made and it then played fine with no drops for the half an hour or so I used. I also exited developer mode and went back in and it was still on full quality.

 

[neil74]

Doesn't stick though so needs to be set each time you connect, which is exactly how it works on a Samsung. Only Huawei have nailed this so far.

 

[Mike Dee]

Doesn't stick though so needs to be set each time you connect, which is exactly how it works on a Samsung. Only Huawei have nailed this so far.

Samsung didn't work on hi bitrate last time I tried on the Note 10+
I haven't tried on the S20 Ultra

 

[neil74]

I should probably qualify my comment that it was selectable on my S10s but was choppy so not really much use. On the P30 Pro it was both selectable and worked fine.