You may have noticed that nearly all modern iPhones and AirPods list support for Bluetooth 5.0 (the first-gen AirPods supported by Bluetooth 4.2). You might surmise, then, that audio streams are being sent using a modern, advanced Bluetooth connection. Not so fast on that assumption!
With nearly all headphones (and phones, tablets, or laptops) that list Bluetooth 5.0 on the spec sheet, that’s not the case at all. The core Bluetooth audio standards used for nearly all wireless audio are based on what they call “Bluetooth Classic,” the foundation of which is Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. That spec is around 15 years old, and while Bluetooth technology has gone through a bunch of changes and improvements since then, most of those improvements have been to enhance things other than the standard audio transmission used for music and calls.
More than two years ago, the Bluetooth SIG (special interest group) ratified a new Bluetooth 5.2 standard, and at the same time it introduced a new audio spec: LE Audio. (The LE stands for Low Energy.) Part of the LE Audio spec is a new audio compression codec: LC3. Together,
