Over the years, the headphones that we connect wirelessly to our phone have been grabbing more and more market share. This kind of gadgets Their main advantage is to be able to avoid the connection via cable with our smartphone, but we have some disadvantages related to the audio quality that they are capable of delivering.
In order to correct this type of inconvenience, Xiaomi incorporated into its equipment the well-known bluetooth codec called “LHDC” (Low latency and High Definition audio Codec), a format that offers us a much higher sound quality than what we find in others such as SBC or AAC, reaching even 900kbps of transfer via Bluetooth. In this post we detail what this codec is and on which devices we have it available.
What is and what are the characteristics of the LHDC codec
To begin to explain what LHDC is, we have to first define what an audio codec is. The codec is a system that includes a set of algorithms that allow encoding and decoding the auditory data received and emitted by the different devices.
This is mainly used to compress signals or audio files with a data stream, with the aim that they have the least possible weight without giving up having a good auditory quality, to later decompress and reproduce them in the best possible format.
Once this concept is defined, we have to clarify that there are several bluetooth audio codecs that are present in our devices, Among which we can find some such as the SBC, AAC, APTX, LDAC, and so on.
All of them differ in aspects such as the latency that they are capable of offering, but mainly their main characteristics revolve around three key concepts:
- Bitrate: Amount of data per second transmitted over a Bluetooth connection, generally measured in kbps or Mbps.
- Sampling frequency: number of data per second in an audio file which is measured in kHz.
- Bit depth: number of bits saved for each audio sample. The higher the number of bits, the higher the audio fidelity the file we play will have.
Therefore, based on these three concepts, we can define what are the characteristics of the LHDC codec. This is characterized by presenting a up to 96kHz sample rate with up to 24-bit bit depth, thus achieving a great lossless audio quality, very similar to what we can find with the LDAC codec developed by Sony.
In addition, another of the characteristics of this codec is the low latency it is capable of offering. Not like others, LHDC is capable of maintaining a practically negligible level of delay if we use it to watch videos or play games on our mobile device, something that seems fundamental and that most low-end headphones suffer today.
Which Xiaomi products have LHDC support
Today, there are already several Xiaomi headphones that have support for the LHDC codec and, as the Asian firm presents new models, they will incorporate it. Among them, we can find:
As for the phones that can enjoy this codec, Our recommendation is that we check from the developer settings of our device if it is available or notas most recently released phones can access it.
To be able to check it, we just have to:
First, activate the developer settings on your phone by pressing several times on “MIUI version” in the “About phone” section.
Once activated, go to “Additional settings”
Select the option “Developer options”
In this section, scroll down until you can select “Bluetooth audio codec” and check that your phone is compatible with this codec in order to activate it