How to boost Bluetooth audio quality on Android smartphones

With the headphone jack gone from almost all the premium smartphones, it’s open season for Bluetooth earphones now. Despite Bluetooth technology advancements that deliver much better sound quality with the addition of various audio codec support and technologies like A2DP and more, there’s still a gap between the audio quality of wired and wireless earphones of a similar price. So in case you already have a pair of Bluetooth earphones and they are not giving appropriate audio quality as you’d like to get, then there’s a workaround that can help boost the audio quality with this small trick.

Having said that, Android smartphones come with the option to change the Bluetooth codec depending upon the earphones you are using and this helps the earphones decode the audio to its maximum potential resulting in much better sound output.

Understanding the Bluetooth codec

Before digging deeper with the steps, it is important to understand codec and how it works. There are several types of Bluetooth codecs used by wireless earphones. The most common is the SBC (Sub Band Codec) which is a universal codec and almost all the Bluetooth audio devices supports this. There are several other more advanced codecs like aptX by Qualcomm which is found in smartphones running Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. Also, Sony has its own codec called LDAC. There’s is another codec called AAC which is used in most of the movie files as the Audio engine.

Codecs are a program which compresses the analogue audio and transmits it to the earphones via Bluetooth and the earphones then decompresses it back to the audio signal. Advance codes like aptX, AAC, LDAC are capable of transmitting a bigger package file at a time and hence results in better audio quality.

However, the key here is the Bluetooth earphones should also support these codecs to take full advantage of it.

Choosing the right codec and how it works

Well, codec support is device-dependent, make sure to check the earphones support page or even box to know what all codecs are supported. Most of the cheap Bluetooth earphones support only SBC or maximum AAC and codecs like LDAC and aptX is limited to some relatively expensive Bluetooth earphones.

In most of the cases, if the headphone supports Qualcomm’s aptX, the device automatically switches to aptX but in case of other codecs like LDAC or AAC, this needs to be done manually.

Changing Bluetooth Codec on your smartphone

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1. Head to ‘Setting’

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2. Scroll down to the ‘About’ section and tap on it

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3. Look for ‘Build number’ and tap on it 7 times until you see a message saying ‘You are a developer’

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4. Once done, head back to the Settings page

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5. Connect the earphones

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6. Now, open ‘Developer options’

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7. Scroll down and locate Bluetooth audio codec option

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8. Under the Bluetooth audio codec, choose the codec supported by the earphones

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9. Once done, restart the smartphone and enjoy the enhanced sound quality.