- Qualcomm and partners will be announcing products "very, very soon"
- Lossless audio over Wi-Fi at up to 24-bit/192kHz
- Rolls back to Bluetooth when Wi-Fi is unavailable or not needed
The best wireless earbuds sound fantastic, but they all face the same limitation: Bluetooth. Bluetooth doesn't have the bandwidth for the highest of hi-res audio streams, and Qualcomm's system to use Wi-Fi as an alternative is finally coming.
The technology is called XPAN, short for 'expanded personal area network', and it uses Wi-Fi to deliver lossless audio that's also very low latency. With Bluetooth, you have to choose between highest quality and lowest latency, but XPAN claims to offer both simultaneously.
The system is part of the Snapdragon Sound technology – particularly the Snapdragon S7 Gen 1 Sound Platform – and that means it won't be coming to iPhones or AirPods any time soon: XPAN requires Snapdragon chips in both the phone/tablet and the headphones.
The first earbuds with XPAN were predicted to launch before the end of 2024, but of course that didn't happen. However, products are imminent: Qualcomm has confirmed to Android Authority that it and its hardware partners will be announcing new headphones "very, very soon".
What sound quality does XPAN deliver?
XPAN promises 24-bit/192kHz lossless audio, and says that power consumption for lossless at 96kHz is identical to that for a lossy Bluetooth stream at the same sampling rate.
24-bit/192kHz is very high resolution. Even the mighty LDAC audio codec tops out at 96kHz, and while aptX Adaptive is also capable of 96kHz, the quality varies by signal strength (hence the "adaptive" bit) and its first generation was only 24-bit/48kHz, so any first-gen products have the same limit.
According to Qualcomm, the new XPAN system will enable you to roam freely around your home without having to stay close to your smartphone or tablet, and if you go out of range of your Wi-Fi network and have your phone on you, your headphones will roll back to Bluetooth.
The main benefit, though, is going to be audio quality. Whether it's hi-res audio, a game soundtrack or just a phone call, the next generation of wireless headphones will potentially sound just as good as some of the best wired headphones.
We've seen Wi-Fi streaming on some of the best wireless headphones already, including the Sonos Ace and the HED Unity Wi-Fi headphones – but it's always extremely power hungry and often awkward to use. Qualcomm's system may fix that… it's just a shame you might need a specific phone and headphones combination to make it work.
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