Open Interface North America introduces lossless Bluetooth audio codec - SOUNDabout Lossless from OINA

Some people are never satisfied - and that’s a good thing. The less-than-high-fidelity audio that we get from our A2DP Bluetooth Stereo headphones apparently irked Open Interface North America enough to develop a higher-quality solution - a lossless audio codec (that piece of code that encodes and decodes a data stream) for Bluetooth headphones. OINA’s lossless stereo audio codec, dubbed SOUNDabout Lossless, was announced today, although an official release date was not specified.

Lossless means the audio stream will not lose any quality as it’s being encoded and transmitted to your Bluetooth headphones. So, the only thing limiting the quality of audio on those Bluetooth headphones of yours will be the actual headphones. And, with an expected go-live date “as early as 2008,” it looks like that spiffy set of Bluetooth cans you just bought is about to be last year’s news. Such is the nature of mobile tech.

Needless to say, the codec will only work with Bluetooth 2.0 compatible devices.

We can’t wait. Now we’re going to have to re-download all our MP3’s in a lossless format and then upgrade our A2DP BT cans to a hi-fi set. It never stops, our wallets are starting to complain.

[Via: PC Mag]