6

I read that Bluetooth on several headphones send the sound with a small delay. This is not a problem when you listen to music or talking with a friend but it is a problem when watching a movie or playing a game.

Could you confirm this delay? Is this delay a problem of Bluetooth in general or only old version of Bluetooth and has been fixed with 3.0 or 4.0 version or is only related to specific brand or i don't know?

(This questions stand in the Game-specific hardware and utilities category)

Improve this question
4
  • 2
    There's always at least some delay when using external (but even internal) hardware, even if it's just the delay the signal needs to get through A/D and D/A converters and the cable. The question is, how susceptible you are to it and how long it really is.
    – Mario
    Mar 12, 2015 at 7:41
  • I'm not sure bluetooth headphones fall into gaming specific hardware.
    – Frank
    Mar 12, 2015 at 12:33
  • 1
    Bluetooth is worse than most other audio hardware because it requires compression, which requires at least some buffering. The fact that it uses noisy radio spectrum as its medium makes it worse. There's going to be lost packets, which either means audio dropouts or more buffering.
    – user86571
    Mar 12, 2015 at 13:34
  • 1
    One final problem with traditional "bluetooth audio" headsets not yet mentioned is that when there's a brief connection glitch, the sound can get roughly half a second out of sync with the image, and will never really sync back. For movies you can at least pause and resume to fix it, but in a game you'd probably be completely stuffed.
    – RomanSt
    Jul 20, 2015 at 13:16

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
6

Searching around, they should be fine if you get some specific things. Mainly, it means getting aptx codec, preferably a headset with the latest bluetooth version (4.2 right now if I'm not mistaken) or that provide low latency and a adapter/dongle that has low latency (< 32 ms).

From to this reddit thread:

you need APT-X to get rid of latency over bluetooth, otherwise it's completely unacceptable for absolutely everything imaginable

and

What you need is a BT 4.0 with low latency headset and a matching transmitter with also low latency feature. BT chip behave this way for the extra feature(APTX and Latency) to work both the receiver and transmitter must have the feature.

Here's a good article on bluetooth headset

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .