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Next Gen Bluetooth Chips To Improve Sound Quality

Richard Baguley Published on September 10, 2007 Comment on this

10th Sept 2007 – The audio quality of Bluetooth headsets can be a little disappointing, but your next Bluetooth headset might sound better if it uses the next generation of CSR chips. The UK company has just announced that their 6th genreation Bluetooth chips (which are used in many cell phones and headsets) will include a new way of transmitting data that will provide better sound quality and improved range.

The new BlueCore6 chips (which will start to appear in Bluetooth devices later this year) are the first to use a new transmission system which, the company claims, will provide better sound quality while sending less data. The new transmission system uses Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCM) encoding for sending audio data over the Bluetooth connection, which compresses the data better and provides better audio quality than the existing encoding that Bluetooth devices use. CSR claims that the voice quality using the new encoding system will be as good as a wired telephone line.

CSR also claims that these next generation chips will have longer standby times. When the device is not actively transmitting or receiving, most of the chip is turned off. Only small parts of it are woken up when the device is scanning for other Bluetooth devices nearby; a technique CSR calls conditional scan. CSR claims that this can save up to 86% of the power consumption of a device while it is on standby, which would translate into longer battery life.