Cellular and semiconductor giant Qualcomm knows how to enable a better Bluetooth experience and then get out of the way. And its latest idea is to bring the best and latest benefits of Bluetooth 5.2. LE audioAnd auracast to the source device you are using to play.
Guy Campbell, Human Resources Manager and Product Marketing at Qualcomm, unveiled the new USB dongle concept joining the company’s S3 Gen 2 Snapdragon Sound platform family on June 21 in London, UK. And this new member of the clan – like all S3 products – is optimized for a specific use case. The main concern here is to get audio with extremely low delay when gaming.
What exactly can it do? First, we need to understand Snapdragon Sound, which Campbell describes as “an amalgamation of Qualcomm’s best technologies in a single product.” So it’s a standard: if a product passes Qualcomm’s rigorous KPI tests, it can qualify for the Snapdragon Sound badge – but that’s a tall order. Snapdragon Sound has been around for almost three years and currently over 100 devices have made it.
Then enter Qualcomm’s dongle idea. This would lead to a level up any Source device capable of hosting USB audio with Snapdragon Sound. This can be a smartphone, a car, a console, a laptop, a PC or even an in-flight entertainment system on the plane (e.g Panasonic’s latest Astrova OLED offspring) so it suddenly works with your LE Audio-enabled earbuds or wireless headsets to deliver Auracast audio prompts and unprecedented latency when gaming.
And that’s a big deal considering that 58% of users Qualcomm recently surveyed expressed a strong interest in high-resolution audio streaming, with 79% saying that reduced audio lag when gaming would be a selling point for a new set of wireless earbuds , and 70% said they would like their hearing aids to have more robust connectivity. Do you like to play games on your smartphone? You’re not alone; According to Qualcomm, 61.5% of gamers use their regular phone more than twice a week to get their gaming solution.
“All of this means we can’t afford to ignore gamers,” Campbell said. And he’s right.
Qualcomm’s new conceptual dongle is great for gamers, but also for salons, bars and waiting rooms
Just plug a small dongle into whatever device you’re playing with (it might be). Nintendo Switchone of the play best nintendo switch games) take advantage of the lowest latency ever for gaming: <20ms. For clarity, this number is dongle specific Good. Classic gaming sink Bluetooth is likely to experience an 80ms delay, which can be reduced to 48ms with LE Gaming. Now Qualcomm has used its own Snapdragon Sound and taken advantage of LE Audio to significantly reduce latency – it’s never been this low. Less than 20? Going fast.
Thanks to aptX Adaptive, you also get higher-resolution audio of up to 24-bit/96kHz (so not lossless, but not very destructive either) and a voice return channel for in-game chats that doesn’t degrade the quality of your game audio. Finally, the wireless connection can adapt (the name says it all), so if you step away from your console to grab a coffee, for example, the rock-solid connection takes precedence over the latency from a distance.
But it’s not just about gaming. Qualcomm’s conceptual dongle can provide Auracast casting capabilities to source devices – and that’s huge too. This means your laptop can stream audio to multiple earbuds at different volume levels. Do you own a sports bar, salon, or dental office? Grab your laptop: you now have Auracast’s audio streaming capabilities to different screens in your business!
Why is this great sounding dongle only conceptual at this point? Qualcomm doesn’t actually make the finished item. As mentioned at the top of this article, Qualcomm’s intention is to make something possible and then make the most of it. The company produces reference products to prove the performance of its technology. I tried it with a small unbranded dongle no larger than half a square inch. While playing the piano on my iPhone, there was a virtually imperceptible delay between pressing the onscreen buttons in a specific order and hearing chopsticks. Remove the dongle and it was back to that agonizing wait for a beep after pressing a button. It was really surprising to be able to tell the difference.
Again, the actual dongle I tried will never make it to market. What could happen relatively soon (and I hope it will) is that this little component will be built into the body of an earphone set – you think LG Tone Free T90Q or Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2, both of which currently offer audio retransmission capability from their respective charging cases – so this case can be connected to an in-flight entertainment system via USB-C, allowing me to receive Bluetooth LE audio on my earbuds. Or a branded dongle of similar dimensions may be sold with a set of them best gaming earbuds as included accessories to enhance your source equipment.
Qualcomm states that it is currently in talks with various manufacturers. I can barely wait for it.
