- Qualcomm and its partners will announce products “very, very soon”
- Lossless audio over Wi-Fi up to 24-bit/192kHz
- Switch back to Bluetooth when Wi-Fi is not available or needed
The best wireless headphones sound fantastic, but they all face the same limitation: Bluetooth. Bluetooth doesn’t have the bandwidth for high-resolution audio streams, and Qualcomm’s approach to using Wi-Fi as an alternative is finally arriving.
The technology is called XPAN, short for “expanded personal area network,” and it uses Wi-Fi to deliver lossless audio with very low latency. With Bluetooth, you have to choose between the highest quality and the lowest latency, but XPAN claims to offer both simultaneously.
The system is part of the Snapdragon Sound technology, particularly the Snapdragon S7 Gen 1 sound platform, and that means it won’t be coming to iPhones or AirPods anytime soon – XPAN requires Snapdragon chips in both the phone/tablet and the headphones.
The first headphones with XPAN were predicted to be released before the end of 2024, but of course that didn’t happen. However, products are imminent: Qualcomm has confirmed to Android Authority that it and its hardware partners will announce new headphones “very, very soon.”
What sound quality does XPAN offer?
XPAN promises 24-bit/192kHz lossless audio and says lossless power consumption at 96kHz is identical to that of a lossy Bluetooth stream at the same sample rate.
24 bit/192 kHz is a very high resolution. Even the powerful LDAC audio codec maxes out at 96kHz, and while aptX Adaptive is also capable of 96kHz, the quality varies depending on signal strength (hence the “adaptive” bit) and its first generation was only 24-bit/48 kHz, so any first-gen products have the same limit.
According to Qualcomm, the new XPAN system will allow you to move freely around your home without having to be near your smartphone or tablet, and if you go out of range of your Wi-Fi network and have your phone with you, your headphones will revert to Bluetooth.
However, the main benefit will be the audio quality. Whether it’s high-resolution audio, a game soundtrack, or just a phone call, the next generation of wireless headphones will potentially sound as good as some of the best wired headphones.
We’ve already seen Wi-Fi streaming in some of the best wireless headphones, including the Sonos Ace and HED Unity Wi-Fi, but it’s always power hungry and often uncomfortable to use. Qualcomm’s system can fix that… it’s a shame you need a specific phone and headset combo for it to work.
