Join for quick access. Enter your email below and we'll send confirmation plus sign you up to our newsletter.
By submitting your information, you confirm you are aged 16 or over,
have read our
Privacy Policy
and agree to the
Terms & Conditions. Geographical rules apply.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Join the club
Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
While 1 Mbps may seem adequate to transmit a stereo signal to a pair of headphones, other information particular to the Bluetooth standard must also share the bandwidth. Signal encryption, error-correction protocols and device authentication codes all have to be broadcast and received alongside any user specified data. That doesn't leave a lot of room to send the latest Britney song in Hi Fi Stereo through the air, but it can be done.
Several manufacturers have begun adding advanced compression capabilities - referred to as the advanced audio distribution profile (AD2P) - to the latest Bluetooth chips, allowing them to work with each other to carry high quality, split signal sound. Like two friends sharing a .zip file over email, the file is shrunk in the Bluetooth transmitter, sent, and then decompressed in the headphones. The separate signals are then sent to the left and right channels. This is obviously a bit more complex than the procedure used to send relatively low quality voice signals between a phone and an earpiece.
The i-Phono has hinges which allow it to be collapsed for travel.
