[Stake]

I was poking around the FCC website to see if I could find anything cool and I think I may have. I haven't seen this anywhere on a non-Japanese site. Toshiba has released (or is releasing) Bluetooth headphones. The question is, would this work with a Pocket PC BT stack?

Nice features include:
- Buttons on the headset for audio/video playback (probably requires drivers)
- Detachable boom mic
- Self contained rechargable batteries (lasts 5 continuous hours)
- Also works with voice calls

It's similar to the Blue Take headphone without a dongle. Their design execution is better than Toshiba's but the dongle is a little combersome. I think it actually requires the dongle for music.

http://www.bluetake.com/Products/BT420ex.htm

Here's the official Toshiba page:
http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/pc/catalog...r1/index_j.htm

Here's the FCC page with an English manual:
https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws...CJ6UPABWC001BT

[Stake]

I was poking around the FCC website to see if I could find anything cool and I think I may have. I haven't seen this anywhere on a non-Japanese site. Toshiba has released (or is releasing) Bluetooth headphones. The question is, would this work with a Pocket PC BT stack?

Nice features include:
- Buttons on the headset for audio/video playback (probably requires drivers)
- Detachable boom mic
- Self contained rechargable batteries (lasts 5 continuous hours)
- Also works with voice calls

It's similar to the Blue Take headphone without a dongle. Their design execution is better than Toshiba's but the dongle is a little combersome. I think it actually requires the dongle for music.

http://www.bluetake.com/Products/BT420ex.htm

Here's the official Toshiba page:
http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/pc/catalog...r1/index_j.htm

Here's the FCC page with an English manual:
https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws...CJ6UPABWC001BT

[Kowalski]

this device sounds great and i would like to have one too, but did you ever consider that the bandwidth of BT wont be enough for full sound quality?

[Pony99CA]

Originally Posted by Kowalski

this device sounds great and i would like to have one too, but did you ever consider that the bandwidth of BT wont be enough for full sound quality?

I'm no audio engineer, but MP3s ripped at 128 kbps are considered near-CD quality. Bluetooth has 720+ kbps. Shouldn't that be enough?

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

Originally Posted by Pony99CA

I'm no audio engineer, but MP3s ripped at 128 kbps are considered near-CD quality. Bluetooth has 720+ kbps. Shouldn't that be enough?

That means that you'd use a lossy codec to handle the transmission. That's fine, but there are several problems:

1. Reencoding lossy material using a lossy codec results in even lower quality;

2. Encoding takes a nontrivial amount of CPU overhead.

A preferable means would be to either boost the bandwidth, which is being done, or to only support stereo for MP3 and to transmit the precise bits over. I think the latter is also being implemented in one Bluetooth profile...

--janak

[Kowalski]

I'm no audio engineer, but MP3s ripped at 128 kbps are considered near-CD quality. Bluetooth has 720+ kbps. Shouldn't that be enough?

i am no audio engineer eighter but
1) 720 kpbs is the theorical speed. i never get more than 300-400 kpbs in reality.
2) the transmitted data is the decompressed data. not the mp3 data itself. so if oneday they make a mp3 decoder built into the headset, the bandwidht requirement will decrease by a factor of 10 but now this is not avaible

[Pony99CA]

While searching the Internet trying to find other Bluetooth information, I came across two things.

First, a Bluetooth audio adapter from Dlink. It's pretty bulky, but indicates that audio may be possible over Bluetooth, but it doesn't give any indication about the audio quality.

Second, a reference design for high fidelity Bluetooth audio. I don't know if any products implement this, though.

Steve

[Kowalski]

somewhere in the in another topic, there has been a discussion on using headset for playing music and the people who has been able to set up says that the sound quality is far from beeing OK.

I've seen the this chip befoure. The one from impulsesoft. this device is built in specialy for this purpose. i bealive that the DSP chip acts as a compressor-decompressor, thus expanding the bandwidth requirement