With Auracast, your Bluetooth headphones are going to be a lot more useful, and your phone can act as a personal radio station. Here's what you need to know.
Seemingly overnight, we’ve seen a new wave of headphones, earbuds, and portable speakers that tout “ Auracast ” compatibility as one of their features. Some of these products even have a dedicated Auracast button.
With broadcast audio, you don’t have to go through the traditional process of opening up Bluetooth menus and pairing two devices together, like a phone and a set of wireless earbuds. Instead, Bluetooth devices broadcast or receive audio, just like traditional terrestrial AM or FM radio. Assistants, on the other hand, provide you with an interface for finding and tuning into those broadcasts in the event that your chosen receiver can’t do that on its own.Here’s a scenario to illustrate:
Assistants don’t need to be apps on phones. Smartwatches could be assistants too, as long as they’re paired with an Auracast-compatible set of earbuds or headphones. Simple hardware assistants might just offer channel up/down buttons, letting you scroll through all available Auracast broadcasts. Scanning a QR code with your phone could be used as a shortcut, letting you bypass the full assistant process and connect directly to your chosen broadcast. When your phone is being used as the transmitter, it may be able to generate a QR code to display on your screen or share with friends via messaging platforms.
Private broadcasts may also be hidden. This is something of a special circumstance, typically reserved for when companies want to use Auracast to connect multiple wireless speakers together. We’ll discuss this more in moment. High quality, low latency By default, Auracast uses the LC3 codec that is required by all Bluetooth LE Audio devices. One of the biggest advantages of the LC3 codec is its ultra-low latency, which means broadcasts should have no visible lip-sync problems when watching videos. In live presentation situations where someone is using an Auracast-capable earbud or hearing aid in just one ear, the audio will arrive at the same time as the ambient sound reaches the other ear.
Auracast is the opposite. You don’t need a Wi-Fi network of any kind. There’s no limit to the number of devices that can receive an Auracast broadcast. And the broadcaster can’t even see how many devices are receiving their transmission, because the technology is 100% one-way. Apple doesn’t support LE Audio on its iPhones, and has made no announcement regarding future compatibility, though iOS apps can still act as Auracast assistants for compatible products.
How do I know which devices support Auracast? The only way to know for sure is to check the manufacturer’s listed features. If a product says it specifically supports Auracast, that’s a solid indicator. When you’re shopping in a store, look for the Auracast logo on the product box. When will we start to see Auracast devices online and in stores? The first Auracast-compatible devices trickled out toward the tail end of 2023. So far, 2024 has been much more promising. We’ve seen Auracast-compatible wireless earbuds from JBL, Earfun, Samsung, and Sennheiser, and we expect more before the end of the year.
Say goodbye to TV transmitters Until now, if you wanted a way to listen to a TV’s audio at home or at the gym or airport, your choices were limited. At home, you could try Bluetooth, but as Digital Trends’ Andy Boxall discovered the hard way, this isn’t always optimal. Alternatively, you could buy a dedicated radio-frequency transmitter, but these require dedicated headphones, and they don’t always support multiple headphones.
With Auracast, you’ll be able to simply look for the language you need on your phone, and start listening using your own headphones or earbuds.
Auracast Bluetooth Bluetooth LE Audio LC3 Codec
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