![]() Drag Bluetooth Explorer into your Mac's Applications folder and launch the app from there.Open your Mac's Applications folder in another Finder window or tab. ![]() Open the Additional Tools drive and navigate to the Hardware folder.Once downloaded, double-click the Additional Tools dmg file to mount it on your desktop.Alternatively, use Google to find the Bluetooth Explorer utility hosted elsewhere and skip to step 5, but if you're not downloading from Apple, be sure to screen the file for malware. Note that to access the page you'll need to register for a free Apple developer account if you don't already have one. Open a web browser, navigate to Apple's developer downloads page, and download Additional Tools for Xcode 9 which contains Apple's Bluetooth Explorer utility.How to Force-Enable aptX and AAC Codecs in macOS However, if the codec shown is SBC, you'll probably want to change it. Without going into the technical details, both standards provide relatively stable wireless connections and – as far as Bluetooth goes – comparably decent sound quality. If your headphones are using AAC or aptX, you don't need to do anything. You should see the headphones' Active Codec shown in grey. Hover your mouse cursor over the headphones in the connection list.(If you don't see it there, you need to check Show Bluetooth in menu bar in System Preferences -> Bluetooth.) Now hold down the Option (Alt) key and click on the Bluetooth symbol in the menu bar.Play some audio on your Mac so that it's streaming to the headphones.Establish a Bluetooth connection between your Mac and headphones in the normal manner.How to Identify Which Bluetooth Codec is Active Once you've established that your headphones support aptX and/or AAC, you'll want to identify which codec is being activated when you connect the headphones to your Mac. (And if you're comfortable opening a Terminal window, we've included a couple of commands at the end that do the same thing.)īut first, it's worth checking which codecs your brand of headphones actually supports: Look for codec logos on the box, and make sure to check for references to codecs in the manual and any accompanying/online spec sheets. In this article, we'll show you how to do so using Apple's Bluetooth Explorer utility. Thankfully, it's possible to force macOS to connect to your headphones using one of the two superior codecs. This can lead to a particularly underwhelming audio experience, not to mention latency-related sync issues, which will be a distinct concern if you use your headphones while gaming or watching movies. Yet for whatever reason, despite their AAC/aptX support, some headphones fall back to the bog-standard SBC codec when connected to a Mac. These two codecs offer higher quality audio and generally lower latency than SBC, which is why most third-party wireless headphones on the market support one or the other, and sometimes both. Fortunately, modern Macs also support AAC (Apple's preferred iTunes codec) and aptX, which Android devices often use. Be that as it may, every Mac audio setup is only as strong as it's weakest link, and if your Bluetooth connection isn't up to scratch, even the best BT headphones will fail to deliver a decent wireless listening experience.īy design, all Bluetooth devices support the low-power SBC audio compression codec as standard. ![]() Although this is probably not wireshark's domain.How good your digital music sounds often comes down to which file format it's encoded in. Is that estimate of bitrate correct?īut that also makes me wonder why a lower bitrate mp3 was being transmitted at a higher bitrate. That would roughly equate to 5376 bits x 65 packets/sec = 349kbps. ![]() Each aptx packet data payload was 672 bytes or 5376 bits. This confirmed that aptx was being used but how would one differentiate between normal aptx and aptx hd using wireshark, even though in my case its most likely aptx hd.Ĭouldnt find any helpul info on the wireshark aptx codec page.Īnother question, roughly 60-70 aptx packets were being sent while listening to both "It's All Well Above Wonder Anyway - Grace Cathedral Park" flac(775kbps) and mp3 (233 kbps). The earphones responded to GetCapabilities request with both sbc and aptx and the phone sent a setConfiguration to aptx which the earphone accepted and aptx audio packets started being sent henceforth. I captured bluetooth hci packets to a log file using my phone and opened the log file in wireshark. I was trying to figure out which codec my lg g5 phone and anker soundbuds slim+ bluetooth earphones were using while transmitting audio. ![]()
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