LE Audio through a technical lens
The highly anticipated nRF5340 Audio Development Kit and nRF Connect SDK software module is finally available. On that occasion, I am writing this blog post to quickly get everyone up to speed on the most important features and aspects of Low Energy Audio!
The word 'Bluetooth' has for a long time been synonymous with wireless audio playback - it is the de facto standard that almost every wireless audio device conforms to, and it has been for the last decade. Today, the Bluetooth that is used for audio transfers to headphones and speakers is the Bluetooth Classic protocol, not to be confused with the Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) protocol.
Perhaps the most notable difference between Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth LE is that Bluetooth Classic commonly uses its radio continuously, which enables it to achieve a higher throughput than Bluetooth Low Energy and thus be more suitable for audio transfer - while Bluetooth LE uses its radio for the shortest time possible - enabling ultra-low power consumption in the device.
The higher throughput and audio quality is why Bluetooth Classic has been the go-to protocol for wireless audio transfer, up until now! As we shall see later in this blogpost, it is now possible to get that same audio quality through Low Energy Audio at a fraction of the power consumption - with additional features enabling a wide range of entirely new audio use-cases.
