KEF - wired vs wireless

[beedobeedobeedo]

Have an i4 emira still in the break in period ~800miles, and I noticed a big bump in audio quality when doing a usb c to usb c wired connection instead of wireless carplay.

Am I just imagining this or has anybody else felt that too? It also felt like it reduced the piped in engine noise or perhaps that was just due to the audio being louder.

 

[Andrew25]

I still have to do some proper testing (same as you - break in period, less than 1000km), but wireless streaming might be compressing data, while cable streaming might not. I’ll be testing this better shortly.

 

[OppositeLock]

Carplay is complex. It supports up to 48kHz 24bit audio on wired and wireless, but the actual bitrate you get could be lower as the phone and head unit negotiate one between themselves. It's totally possible a different one is being negotiated over WiFi. This is completely separate from Bluetooth audio, which definitely compresses audio heavily.

In my car, the wired connection works better because the wireless one frequently freezes, so I've gotten into the habit of plugging the phone in via USB.

 

[beedobeedobeedo]

My hot, completely unfounded take is that though the KEF system is suboptimal, I think the artificial engine audio, terrible carplay integration, and lack of pre-speaker break-in has made it much worse than it actually is.

 

[Bulls-Vivid-Red]

I spent some time yesterday with some songs which are well known to me and could not hear a difference......even at unreasonably loud volume levels. I can't say I have perfect ears these days, but I assume any differences would be relatively obvious.

FWIW, I was paranoid if the car was actually using the USB when physically connected and so I ran the test by disabling my wifi/bluetooth before entering the car (untethered Android Auto uses bluethooth for discovery/setup and streams music over wifi).

 

[geoffbland]

I spent some time yesterday with some songs which are well known to me and could not hear a difference.

You are probably correct. I think maybe people are getting confused here and hearing things that are not there.

Bluetooth audio is lossy when we are talking about the sound sent by a bluetooth device (such as an iPod or mobile phone) to a bluetooth audio device (such as bluetooth headphones or wireless earpods). How lossy that is depends on the device, however most are capable of 300kbps+. The human ear is very unlikely to be able to hear any difference at those kinds of bitrates.

But that’s moot anyway as the bluetooth used by Android Auto has to be lossless, whether wired or wireless, else the programs and data used by Android Auto would crash and fail. Android Auto uses a lossless protocol (I suspect proprietary or at least undocumented by Google). As far as I can tell there should be no difference between Android Auto audio whether wireless or wired.

 

[yellow35s]

Does the car pipe in engine noise under all circumstances ? Booo - I’ve been driving primarily with the windows open to enjoy the supercharger wine and exhaust noise. I hadn’t realized that we needed piped in engine noise for this car. My ears are a foot from the intake !