Your JBL, Sony, or Bose Bluetooth headphones got a top-to-bottom wireless makeover -- not just Auracast.
The shift from Classic Bluetooth to LE Audio is in full swing, as JBL and Sony release flagship headphones and earbuds with built-in LE Audio. Bose is the latest to upgrade its flagship headphones via an OTA firmware update.
Auracast, the Bluetooth protocol that enables one-to-many audio streams and is the most popular LE Audio feature, but several other LE Audio upgrades don’t get as much attention. These features improve wireless voice call quality, reduce battery drain in true wireless earbuds, and remove ecosystem barriers to low-latency mobile gaming. Here’s why they matter just as much as Auracast.
LE Audio includes the Low Complexity Communication Codec (LC3), which includes the unified Telephony and Media Audio Profile (TMAP) to handle audio streams and voice calls simultaneously. Bluetooth Classic relies on the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) and Hands-Free Profile (HFP), which handle the same functions but require both profiles.
The profiles in Bluetooth Classic, given that they must alternate, result in extremely poor voice quality during hands-free calls over cellular or video calls on Zoom or Teams. These profiles also account for degraded voice quality when chatting while playing a mobile game.
LE Audio consolidates these two profiles, creating higher-quality, bidirectional audio and preserving voice call quality when using wireless headphones.
Earlier this year, JBL gave its flagship Tour Pro 3 earbuds an OTA firmware update to support LE Audio, and Sony’s WF-1000XM6 earbuds, released in February, have LE Audio support out of the box.
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