So I have an iPhone 6 Plus on the way and I was wondering if it supports aptx. I know it's something that hasn't been supported on past iOS versions and devices but it's on OS X so I was hoping the new iPhone's support it.
Except iPhone 7 which does not have 3.5mm audio jack, you can use Taotronic TT-BA07 in Tx mode(transmission) and have aptx feature kn bluetooth connection. Obviously, youwill keep the BT of iPhone turned off, and pair your wireless headphone to TT-BA07, which is connected to the audio jack.
There was a time when Apple gave customers a superior experience. But with numerous turf battles and standards disputes, Apple now only gives you a bunch of hassle and headache. Its no surprise they are falling behind and missing sales targets. Bluetooth Aptx is just the latest insult to its customers.
I haven´t seen any spec that clarifies yes/no. If iPhone 6 does NOT support Apt-X, I will not buy one. Apple was about music, and now about money.
I am sure it does not. Apple would have announced it if it was there.
Clearly they are trying to stick their heads in the sand and pretend AptX doesn't exist. Either they don't want to come late to the party (and be accused of the same things they are being accused of now in terms of "finally" getting the phone size right) or they are arrogant enough to believe they have a better handle on providing sound (with perhaps some other technology up their sleeve, and possibly even with Beats tech folks).
It's not stopping me from getting the two iPhone 6's, but it IS disappointing.
It's definitely disappointing but like you said it's not a deal breaker, I'm happy with my 6 plus and wouldn't return it simply over aptx. I just hope aptx comes by ios 9 and hopefully apple will open up nfc for Bluetooth pairing long before then. Apple has made a pretty big leap catching up on hardware and
features but it's still got work to do.
Glad you like your Plus -- that's what I'm getting (eventually. Sigh -- waited 30 minutes for the Apple store to come up and when it did I was already three weeks out of shipping). My wife is getting the 6 because she doesn't need/want the Phablet factor.
But I wouldn't hold out hope for iOS 9 supporting AptX. Let's face it, the technology has been around for over 20 years so there is no way Apple is "suddenly" going to implement it. It's proprietary, and Apple has a long history of not using other proprietary technology. The one and only way it will ever appear in iOS is if Apple buys CSR (which is certainly a possibility).
(And before folks start saying "well, it's in OS X" remember that that's a Unix based system which already has hooks for the technology. It's a whole different ballgame to adapt to a different OS. Since OS X is actually migrating to more of an iOS structure, it's more likely that support for AptX will disappear entirely from Apple rather than suddenly appear everywhere).
I think it's a good possibility if enough iPhone/iPad users ask for it. Apple has been through a big change now that Steve Jobs is gone, it doesn't have Jobs narrow minded views and Apple is starting to give consumers what they want instead of telling them what they want.
iOS supportsAAC and plain old SBC over A2DP (pdf). aptX is not mentioned, so I assume it's not supported. As far as I know (I might be wrong here), aptX requires a proprietary CSR chip and/or licensing fees, so this whole situation is not surprising. Moreover, my personal experience with aptX-capable Sony and Samsung phones and a pair of Sennheiser MM 450-X was less than enjoyable, with frequent dropouts, clipping and weird distortion at high frequencies.
I think AAC-capable headphones would be an optimal choice, as they would let iOS stream 256kbps AAC audio directly, without any further transcoding.
You might be right if there were more headphones that supported AAC (which at the moment is pretty rare to find). However, IMX I have not found AAC encoded files, at least at the 256 that Apple uses, to be as good as the 320 cbr mp3's I encode (note that the common disclaimer is that AAC files are better than mp3s when encoded at the same rate).
Since all my own files are mp3s coded using the insane preset I'm happy using bluetooth, but would like a chance to use AptX. But it does require licensing from CSR and as I said in my post that's not something Apple does (although they do buy companies like CSR :>).
I wanted to say, AAC headphones would eliminate transcoding. You compress your music with a state-of-the-art encoder, and then it gets reencoded with another codec tuned for power efficiency and low latency over quality. aptX might be better than SBC, but they both inevitably add distortion.
Anyway, even after trying out aptX I'm still happy with SBC. Street noise and a cheap DAC+amplifier in the headphones make these fine details irrelevant for me🙂
The problem with that is most people don't have their music library formatted as aac files. The vast majority of users use mp3 or flac files. I've been contemplating converting my files to 320 kbps aac because my headphones do support aac but I really don't want to go through all the trouble of it.
By the way, if you use iTunes to sync your music library to the phone, there's a super convenient "convert stuff to AAC when syncing" box that converts high-bitrate files to AAC 256 while copying. Saves space on the phone, too. I'm not sure, but higher bitrate (more than 256) would likely be recoded to 256 when sent to the headphones.
I wasn't aware of that feature. I'll have to check it out, if I'm able to change the default to a higher bitrate I might make use of it. Shouldn't the headphones should play it regardless of the bitrate because it's still AAC?
If your headphones do specifically have AAC decoding support then by all means convert your files to AAC and use that (assuming that's the only place you are going to play them).
The problem with this approach in general for many people is that they play their tunes on a variety of platforms and places. Keeping them at 320 cbr is the most logical (and in many situations, only) solution (the other reason I like mp3 is I can use MP3Gain which is a MUCH better gain leveler than the built-in iTunes method).
I don't know. Apple's technical docs specify 256kbps and a particular frame format. I hope iTunes formats the files properly during conversion.
Aptx support in iPhone 6 and iOS 8
