OINA bringing lossless audio to Bluetooth devices

Audiophiles hoping to get a bit more clarity out of those Bluetooth cans can officially get excited, as Open Interface North America (OINA) has just announced plans to introduce a new lossless codec for stereo audio known as SOUNDabout Lossless. Unsurprisingly, the firm is keeping its secrets on the DL for now, but recent demonstrations showed that it will have a latency as low as two-milliseconds and never exceed ten-milliseconds. Additionally, power consumption was intentionally kept low in order to preserve that precious battery life, and just in case you couldn't guess, it'll only stream properly with Bluetooth 2.0 gizmos. Sadly, there's no firm dates to mark on your calendar just yet, but the company is currently estimating that the codec will be ready to rock in detail never before heard over BT "as early as 2008."

[ELQ @ Aug 2nd 2007 1:00AM]

This is actually good news, as the existing A2DP codec is pretty bad in terms of quality. Hopefully, the standard will move there and all new devices supports it.

[Jeebus @ Aug 2nd 2007 1:27PM]

Is it in fact lossless, or does it just sound about lossless?

[4cr JaXs @ Aug 8th 2007 7:29PM]

Awesome, now if we can get some decent hardware.