I have Sony MDR-1000X and manually have to select LDAC in the developer options instead of aptX. The settings are not persistent, so aptX is selected by the phone each time I connect the headphones.
It would be great if Fairphone could fix so that LDAC is persistent when you fix the other issues. LDAC sounds better on my headphones at least.
If you want to have a persistent change, you must not use the developer options but you need to turn off the “HD audio” option in the Bluetooth settings of the headphone.
If you want to use at least LDAC, you can use the Bluetooth Codec Changer app as mentioned above. This will automatically set the desired codec for the device as soon as the connection is established.
I have related issue but with car (VW T-Roc) audio. When I try to call via car’s infotainment system, car audio produced “radio freq” type of noise. There is a “HD audio: AAC” toggle for this BT connection but making it ON or OFF doesn’t make any difference.
Anyone having similar issues ?
Welcome to the forum.
Hopefully there’s another codec common to both phone and earbuds. With the earbuds on, paired and connected to the phone, go to
Settings > System > Developer options1 > Bluetooth audio codec
You will see a list of the options supported by the pair of devices (i.e. that they have in common). Make a note of the current setting before changing it.
1 - If you don’t currently use Developer options, see here. Do not adjust these settings unless you know what you’re doing and how to undo what you’ve done.
Rather than go without HD I guess I would first use Dev options to check that a usable codec is available and then install the Bt Codec Changer mentioned several times in this topic. Dezponia’s post is a good summary!
I recently switched to LineageOS 20, which is based on Android 13. With that AptX works fine. So it can be fixed and I think it’s just a matter of time when the stock Android version of Fairphone will also work properly.
Sadly the latest update with build number FP4.SP25.B.058.20230318 does not appear to change the status of this Bluetooth “HD audio” issue with aptX introduced with the FP4 Android 12 upgrade. I’ve re-ran all my testing on this update to confirm the status is unchanged. As such the workarounds and status of my previous posts are still applicable.
Bluetooth Audio issue TL:DR:
aptX and aptX Adaptive remain broken for now.
SBC, AAC, aptX HD, and LDAC works.
Workarounds linked below.
Bluetooth Audio Workarounds can be found here:
My troubleshooting of this issue can be found here:
Looking forward to seeing the remaining aptX codecs fixed in a future version. Thanks for the other fixes and security updates in this update.
Article is wrong regarding LDAC. If you go to developer options, you can select 4 options for Bluetooth Audio LDAC Codec Selection: Playback Quality:
Optimized for Audio Quality (990 kbps / 909 kbps)
Balanced Audio And Connection Quality (660 kbps / 606 kbps)
Optimized for Connection Quality (330 kbps / 303 kbps)
Best Effort (Adaptive Bit Rate)
LDAC is proprietary (Sony), but it works well. The only downside is the latency (however something like video gets offset to audio latency, so it Just Works ™.)
The only time you want low latency is when you are phoning or perhaps when you are video calling (then the video can offset as well, at the cost of a latency of say 200 msec).
For people who don’t have Sony headphones, AAC is still a serious improvement over SBC. Whenever you use your mic, I believe Bluetooth automatically switches to SBC anyway.
It is really more than high time to solve this now quite embarrassing problem. According to the feedback here in the forum, even custom roms have no problems with it. it’s just rude not to fix it. Everyone expects the one company to deliver the one working product.
Do you really think “spamming” the forum every other day with the same broken record will speed up anything? You are free to do so, and still you are adressing your complains towrads other uses not FP, so most likely not at all helpful neither for you nor for others…
A saying I read the other day (in German);
Das ärgerliche am Ärger ist (selbst wenn berechtigt), dass er einem selbst schadet ohne anderen zu nutzen…
Yes they do. Calyx moved to the Android 12 blobs a few days ago (still in beta I believe) and firmware based bugs like this one or the screen dimming issue are totally there as well.
A lot of the other stuff isn’t, because it got patched, or solved with Android 13, but the blobs can and sometimes will effect custom ROMs as well.
I don’t understand why the behavior of FP is also being defended here. It was once said it will be fixed, again half-heartedly. Since then there has been no more feedback. What does this have to do with spamming? Why isn’t trading transparent here?
Es ist kein Ärger sondern eine Enttäuschung.
Wer selber keine versprechen hält, wird wohl selbst damit zu frieden sein, gebrochene versprechen zu akzeptieren.
Die Hoffnung stirbt bekanntlich zuletzt…
I talked about the Bluetooth problem, that’s also the thread about it.