Maceton WM4U Bluetooth adapter

[SoNic67]

I have just purchased this Bluetooth headphones DAC (adapter) from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IDEZ3YW

It is basically a DAC and a Bluetooth sink in one small device, with an internal rechargeable battery. What is interesting is that it supports the higher quality AptX codec and it has a dedicated headphones amplifier (TI).
I have "snooped" on the Bluetooth connection protocol with my Moto G4 and indeed it did connect using the AptX codec.
Quality-wise is surprisingly good! I have attached to my Grado headphones and, playing some uncompressed files (the AptX encoding happens in the phone) it sounded very, very good.
Almost blew my eardrums off at max level, definitely a headphone amp is used!

PS: This is meant only as an informative post, please do not take it as an advertising.

 

[E.Auer]

So is BT now getting close to WiFi as far as sound quality goes?

Eric

 

[SoNic67]

Oh, no no no. AptX is lossy compressed, at a 352 Kbit/sec for stereo, albeit this is a better quality than normal SBC. And not all devices support AptX, for example iPhones don't. Moto devices, mainly because they have Qualcomm chipsets, are supporting AptX.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AptX