Bluetooth Hi-Fi: The Headphones Of The Future?

Blue's Genes - A Technology's Limits

Don't take these as just an expensive replacement for the cheap earbuds that come with most portable audio players today. We got a chance to give one a try, and found out that it has a couple of [more] tricks up its sleeve.

But before we get to the tricks, some background. The first question we had was: why are these devices just hitting the market now, when Bluetooth has been available to consumers since 1998? One expert on the CES floor explained that there have been two main obstacles: chip prices and data transmission rates. As Bluetooth has become more popular and its use more widespread, manufacturing costs have been on the decline, removing one problem. But obviously there hasn't been an increase in the amount of data that the 2.4 GHz band is able to carry. Even though the specification standard 1.2 is already in most devices crossing register counters today, manufacturers are still limited by a 1 Mbps data rate.

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