[pulseaudio-discuss] Extra A2DP codecs support in bluetooth module

[Georgi Boiko]

Hi,

Does anybody know what happened after this discussion? Is this long 
overdue upgrade on the roadmap?

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-discuss/2017-July/028398.html

As Bluetooth headphones continue to grow in popularity (AirPods, Bose, 
Sony and many of the smaller brands now), so does the demand for high 
quality codecs. SBC is not one of them: 
http://soundexpert.org/news/-/blogs/audio-quality-of-bluetooth-aptx

At best, it is comparable to mp3 128kbps or 192kbps if you are lucky. It 
is not noticeable on the AirPods, but quite so on the Bose QC35 and even 
more so on the Sony MDX-1000X.

Currently, SBC is hardcoded into the Bluetooth module, for example 
https://github.com/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/blob/master/src/modules/bluetooth/bluez5-util.c#L1260 
and no other codecs are ever mentioned outside of the headers file 
imported from BlueZ.

Meanwhile, bluez-alsa has had support for both AAC and apt-X for the 
last 2 years: 
https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa/commit/8221b948a0914467850bf52f5076bdf92173b2a1 
while BlueZ in general has had it since the v3 branch.

Android started supporting full range of Bluetooth codecs in Oreo and 
Apple products including MacOS have had them for a while. Since Ubuntu 
uses PulseAudio, this leaves the headliner of Linux world far behind.