Bluetooth 6.2 – more responsive, improves security, USB comms, and testing

Re:Bluetooth 6.2 – more responsive, improves security, USB c... by lxgr on Wednesday November 12, 2025 @12:30PM (#45902983)

> Apple fixes this with AirPods by doing a proprietary codec and probably quite a bit of non-trivial sound processing. None of that is part of the Bluetooth standard

Do you have any sources for that claim?

As far as I understand (and based on what I've seen in some Bluetooth debugging menus at least a few macOS versions back), for HFP they just use regular mSBC.

That's an optional codec for HFP (while SBC is mandated for A2DP), and a step above absolute potato quality G.711/PCM u-law, but still part of the regular Bluetooth HFP specs.

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Re:Bluetooth 6.2 – more responsive, improves security, USB c... by Kirby64 on Wednesday November 12, 2025 @05:40PM (#45907885)

https://medium.marco.zone/apple-implemented-the-biggest-impr...

More modern Airpods use AAC-ELD, which is way way better than mSBC. Still not as good as it could be, but pretty decent and sounds far less muddy.

Basically no support in Windows et al though.

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Re:Bluetooth 6.2 – more responsive, improves security, USB c... by lxgr on Thursday November 13, 2025 @12:54AM (#45911222)

Oh, wow, and this apparently even became available to the AirPods Pro 2 retroactively. Totally missed that, thank you!

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Re:Bluetooth 6.2 – more responsive, improves security, USB c... by Kirby64 on Thursday November 13, 2025 @09:23AM (#45915234)

Note this was with the AirPods 3, not the pro 3. Every AirPods Pro line should have this.

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