[Duncan]

Originally Posted by Nurhisham Hussein

I was under the impression that A2DP compresses the sound further - could be wrong though.

I'm given to understand it depends largely on the bitrate of the music or the processor of the transmitting device. Some devices with less processing power have to lower the bitrate of the streaming in order to smoothly transmit, even more powerful devices will have trouble smoothly transmitting high bitrates (320k etc.). Though I suppose that cheaper or older headphones might have limitations on what they can cope with receiving. Which means I was, perhaps, slightly too bold in my previous comment.

Up until I got my Touch Pro I used the dedicated transmitter provided with my Plantronics headphones (still regularly considered to be the best BT headphones on the market), now I use the Touch Pro's own radio. My WMAs are all encoded at 160k or 192k. Frankly I can't tell the difference between the BT streaming, or the sound I get when I used the headphones with a wire, both are very good. That suggests to me that as long as the transmitting device doesn't (need to) compress the file, then you get the full quality.

The bandwidth/transmission speed of Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR is easily more than enough to cope with even high bitrate (320k) music, in theory. I'm pretty certain that the A2DP profile itself doesn't require extra compression, at least nothing I could find when I first looked into the idea of BT headphones said anything about it.

[Duncan]

Originally Posted by Nurhisham Hussein

I was under the impression that A2DP compresses the sound further - could be wrong though.

I'm given to understand it depends largely on the bitrate of the music or the processor of the transmitting device. Some devices with less processing power have to lower the bitrate of the streaming in order to smoothly transmit, even more powerful devices will have trouble smoothly transmitting high bitrates (320k etc.). Though I suppose that cheaper or older headphones might have limitations on what they can cope with receiving. Which means I was, perhaps, slightly too bold in my previous comment.

Up until I got my Touch Pro I used the dedicated transmitter provided with my Plantronics headphones (still regularly considered to be the best BT headphones on the market), now I use the Touch Pro's own radio. My WMAs are all encoded at 160k or 192k. Frankly I can't tell the difference between the BT streaming, or the sound I get when I used the headphones with a wire, both are very good. That suggests to me that as long as the transmitting device doesn't (need to) compress the file, then you get the full quality.

The bandwidth/transmission speed of Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR is easily more than enough to cope with even high bitrate (320k) music, in theory. I'm pretty certain that the A2DP profile itself doesn't require extra compression, at least nothing I could find when I first looked into the idea of BT headphones said anything about it.

[Pony99CA]

Originally Posted by Nurhisham Hussein

Darn, that's a pretty good deal. How's the sound?

Hard to say. I only use them to listen to MP3s on my PDAs, and those are usually ripped at 128 kbps. I do notice some skips occasionally, but I suspect that would occur with any Bluetooth A2DP headset.

I got mine from Woot, but I've seen other sets on various deal sites, too.

Steve

[Menneisyys]

Read my quick review at MWC: (Quick) review: Altec (Plantronics) 903 / 906 A2DP Bluetooth headphones – wowz!