Bluetooth music from Ipad to amplifer

[IceBoy]

Hi Guys,

How good is the quality of the music if you bluetooth the music from your ipad to a dedicated a/v amplifier that has built-in bluetooth or airplay?

IceBoy

[MrSparks]

I sell bluetooth speaker systems of various types so have played with most bluetooth, AirPlay etc systems and technologies.

I'm no audiophile but it's more than good enough for most ears!

Airplay is great for ease of use (iOS users) but bluetooth works on pretty much everything.

I don't think you'd be disappointed with any of the main bluetooth streamers out there.

[IceBoy]

Hi MrSparks!

I will be in touch soon, I promise....house renovations start in the summer.

The question is really around, what is the quality of bluetooth sound on a mid end AV amplifier.

How does the sound differ from say a CD player connected to the same amp?

IceBoy

[SuperchargedVR6]

I use an Audioengine B1 Bluetooth receiver, mainly for flexibility in connecting to portable active speakers (B1 takes 5V from USB) and also connect it to my AV amp.

It sounds great, no complaints. It also greatly extends the Bluetooth range too.

The weakest link in this pairing is of course the iPad/iPhone. Several generations in and *STILL* no system wide user adjustable EQ.

So in short, great SQ from my Mac computer. Pretty dire SQ from the phone / ipad, but that's the device, not the B1 or the amp/speakers.

[mackie1]

Would you really want to EQ *before* transmission? Surely that should be further down the chain. Is the quality poor because it's using SBC rather and AAC or AptX?

[MrSparks]

IceBoy said:

Hi MrSparks!

I will be in touch soon, I promise....house renovations start in the summer.

The question is really around, what is the quality of bluetooth sound on a mid end AV amplifier.

How does the sound differ from say a CD player connected to the same amp?

IceBoy

Ah I see!

If it helps, we installed an Onkyo AVR (TX-NR757 I think) a few weeks back connected to Niles CM8HD ceiling speakers (good ones) and it sounded superb with directly streamed bluetooth, especially with the Paradigm subwoofer Personally I can barely tell the difference between that and a plugged in source (admittedly I didn't try a decent CD player on it).

Hopefully someone else will have a direct comparison with a CD player for you too.

[legzr1]

AptX is acceptable and perhaps on a par with CD from a starter separates system.

Standard BT and AirPlay, to my ears, doesn't fair so well - ok for background music from a battery powered 'box' in a kitchen/garage but hifi it is not.

Whether it's good enough for you depends on your personal convenience/ quality ratio.

[JimbobVFR]

Does anything reasonably recent not use Apt-x these days? i'd have thought it was reasonably ubiquitous now.

[mackie1]

Not Apple, but iDevices will stream AAC without transcoding so if you're primarily using Apple stuff with iTunes music make sure the BT receiver does AAC. SBC sounds OK with a lossless source but as soon as you start double encoding stuff artefacts start to creep in.

Interestingly Sony have a high bitrate lossless codec for BT called LDAC but it's only available in Sony products. Works well but more susceptible to breakup due to the higher bandwidth requirements.