Bluetooth is set to receive a long overdue upgrade. First announced in 2020, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group reports that the new Bluetooth LE Audio standard is set to be updated to enhance auto quality and energy efficiency, ushering in “a new era of smart audio.”
Most of the upgrade comes thanks to the Low Complexity Communications Codec (LC3), which is designed to provide high quality audio at significantly lower bitrates to its predecessor, the SBC codec. This means that wireless audio devices will be able to enjoy higher quality audio while consuming less battery life.
The new LE standard is also set to include a multi-stream feature called Auracast, which will allow for multiple audio streams between a single device and multiple sink devices. This will allow multiple people to stream different things off of a single device in a space.
