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I think that's a second recent discussion on Bluetooth here that doesn't mention aptX at all. For me that was a gamechanger, wouldn't really buy anything that doesn't support it. Unless there are some other similar things around which I'm not aware of.

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AptX is lossy compression which when applied to already compressed sources (e.g. Spotify), still gives noticeably inferior audio (it's effectively transcoding). Most people listen to compressed music and so the right thing to do with limited bandwidth is to send the original compressed data over Bluetooth (as Apple/Bose do with AAC). AptX is probably fine if you have non-lossy compressed sources like FLAC.

Well I hope that Spotify on Android does send original AAC to devices which support it too, but more general point is that you need support on both sides. Something has to decode that AAC on the receiving end, otherwise you'll get standard codecs which are crap (or rather their implementations).

People discuss it without those terms and come to different conclusions, e.g. most like when you use a mic you switch codecs, 99% sure.

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