Yamaha YBA-11 lossless (over bluetooth)?

[akrapovic58]

Hi All.

I was wondering if the Yamaha's bluetooth connector is lossless? Or will you have a better soundquality through an usb cable?
I want to connect the YBA to an IrDAC. Or are there überhaupt bluetooth connector with no loss of quality?

Thx for any thoughts or advice.

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/accessories/yba-11_w/?mode=model

 

[chebby]

Lossless if the source is aptX.

 

[akrapovic58]

So exact the same as a usb cable to the DAC?

 

[unsleepable]

Lossless if the source is aptX.

Bluetooth still does not allow for 44.1KHz/16-bit lossless audio.

 

[akrapovic58]

For the topic and all those who are interested in this discussion:

What is aptX: http://www.aptx.com/

http://www.csr.com/products/60/aptx
Key Features aptX

• Compression ratio: 4:1
• Audio Format: 16-bit, 44.1kHz (CD-Quality)
• Data Rates: 352kbps
• Frequency Response: 10Hz to 22kHz
• Algorithmic Delay: <1.89ms @ Fs 48KHz
• Dynamic Range: 16-bit: >92dB
• THD+N: -68.8dB

Technical Specifications compared to irDAC

• DAC: TI PCM1796
• 
  Inputs: USB, SPDIF, optical, iPod
• 
  Frequency response: 10Hz — 20kHz, ±0.1dB
• 
  Total Harmonic Distortion: + Noise 0.002%
• 
  Signal-to-noise ratio (A –Weighted): 112dB (24-bit)
• 
  Line output level: 2.2Vrms
• 
  Supported sample rates: 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 192kHz
• 
  Supported bit depths: 16-bit, 24-bit
• 
  Power requirements: 7W max

Benefits aptX

• Outstanding Bluetooth® Stereo audio quality
• Audio bandwidth matching CD performance
• Flat Frequency Response. Full audio bandwidth faithfully reproduced
• Low audio coding delay. Minimizes latency and ‘lip-sync’ issues
• Non destructive transcoding, means there are no dueling effects with other algorithms
• Uses Time Domain ADPCM principle rather than Psychoacoustic masking
• Small code / data memory size
• Backward Compatibility: when aptX is not available target device will pair down to SBC

Product Details
The aptX audio codec is available for high quality stereo audio over Bluetooth. When incorporated in Bluetooth A2DP Stereo products, aptX audio coding delivers full 'wired' audio quality. With the aptX audio codec source material is transparently delivered over the Bluetooth link, whether it is stored uncompressed or in an alternative compression (MP3, AAC, FLAC) format.

So the bluetooth connection will probably bottleneck it a little bit...? oke:

 

[chebby]

Lossless if the source is aptX.

Bluetooth still does not allow for 44.1KHz/16-bit lossless audio.

That's not what I am reading ....

http://www.csr.com/products/60/aptx

... Under 'key features' it states ...
Audio Format: 16-bit, 44.1kHz (CD-Quality)[/list]

 

[unsleepable]

I was wondering if the Yamaha's bluetooth connector is lossless? Or will you have a better soundquality through an usb cable?

I want to connect the YBA to an IrDAC. Or are there überhaupt bluetooth connector with no loss of quality?

Have you checked the Airport Express?

 

[unsleepable]

Lossless if the source is aptX.

Bluetooth still does not allow for 44.1KHz/16-bit lossless audio.

That's not what I am reading ....

http://www.csr.com/products/60/aptx

... Under 'key features' it states ...
Audio Format: 16-bit, 44.1kHz (CD-Quality)[/list]

Sorry for the confusion! aptX is a set of audio codecs. The codecs do allow for lossless audio—but not over Bluetooth. Bluetooth simply does not provide enough bandwidth.

Lossless 44.1KHz/16-bit audio requires ~ 1.4 Mbps, and Bluetooth A2DP only provides 768 Kbps. Therefore, the audio is 44.1KHz/16-bit but with lossy compression.

 

[akrapovic58]

Thx for clearifiyng that, unsleepable. Shame they put it this way one their site...

 

[akrapovic58]

I was wondering if the Yamaha's bluetooth connector is lossless? Or will you have a better soundquality through an usb cable?

I want to connect the YBA to an IrDAC. Or are there überhaupt bluetooth connector with no loss of quality?

Have you checked the Airport Express?

Do you loose audioquality with an airport Express?

 

[unsleepable]

Not necessarily. AirPlay transmits audio both with lossy and lossless compression—depends on what you have at the source. The Airport Express accepts audio with 44.1KHz/16-bit resolution.

So if you play a CD, mp3, mp4 files, etc., quality will not be reduced. But if you play higher resolution material, it will need to be downsampled.

 

[akrapovic58]

Not necessarily. AirPlay transmits audio both with lossy and lossless compression—depends on what you have at the source. The Airport Express accepts audio with 44.1KHz/16-bit resolution.

So if you play a CD, mp3, mp4 files, etc., quality will not be reduced. But if you play higher resolution material, it will need to be downsampled.

Aaaaargh

You need Airfoil (@ €25 / pc) on every pc if you don't use iTunes

 

[unsleepable]

You need Airfoil (@ €25 / pc) on every pc if you don't use iTunes

Yes, I think with Windows—but not with a Mac.

I was a happy Airfoil user for a long time. But regrettably, it became unusable for me when I connected a DAC to the digital output of the Airport Express. Airfoil seems to have major timing issues that conflict with the asynchronous USB management of the better DACs. It failed both with the irDac and with a Naim DAC-V1—although the latter was able somehow to recover from the issue after displaying an error message.

 

[pedling]

I have the Yamaha YBA-11 connected to my Sony Receiver, and I use a Samsung S4 (smartphone) and a Creative BT-D1 (Apt-x and SBC codec support) dongle for my laptop (which installs as a Music Device (rather than a Bluetooth device) in Windows).

As I understand the APT-X tech is that it compress the Audio like when data is compressed when using ZIP (no dataloss 16K/44Khz)...

When I play music 24B/96K Flac files from my S4 the sound get downsampled to 44KHZ, when playing same flacs files from Creative dongle gets downsampled to 48Khz,, can see anything about 16 or 24 bits on the Sony Receiver, but I know that the Samsung S4 soundchip is limit 16B/44K..

 

[unsleepable]

I believe it could be 24-bit—at least, aptX supports that. But it's still lossy compression. So not like ZIP, but rather like JPEG. I suppose the codec needs to decide whether more quality is lost by reducing the integer resolution to 16-bit, or compressing the audio more.

I don't think any aptX profile goes beyond 48KHz/24-bit. And at that resolution, I struggle to see the point with Hi-Fi as audio will be subject to a more aggressive lossy compression. But I guess it makes sense for other uses as mono or reduced frequency range recordings such as voice interviews.