While testing a bluetooth issue on my laptop I was connecting to the Mu-so 2nd gen. I suddenly noticed that it was “only” using AAC, so was wondering why it wouldn’t use AptX (HD).
Looking a the specifications I then noticed that the 2nd. gen only supports AAC & SBC where the 1st gen. had actually supported AptX. (And the Uniti’s support AptX HD).
Why, on the newer generation, would Naim have ditched this? I would have expected a higher quality codec like AptX HD or LDAC be added more logical than dropping the (arguably) best one?
Good point. I don’t know what the licensing situation is now with AptX (though there seems to exist a free implementation as libopenaptx in PulseAudio and PipeWire) but according to Wikipedia the LDAC encoder is open under the Apache 2.0 license (and according to the reviews I read is at least as good as AptX HD)
Yup, would have made sense to include at least that one. Maybe it can be added via a firmware update?
Having AAC as your highest quality option feels a bit strange for a 1.5k device, released in 2019/2020. Especially for a high-end brand like Naim with a focus on sound quality.