🎧 Listening properly
“Can I listen to BrainHz on Bluetooth earphones?” The short answer: over Bluetooth, most of the advantage BrainHz adds over ordinary audio is cancelled out. Here is why — and what to do if Bluetooth is your only option.
Compared with ordinary audio, BrainHz files differ in three ways: (1) uncompressed lossless WAV, with nothing discarded; (2) restored 16–24 kHz high frequencies, the band MP3 throws away; and (3) 40 Hz modulation, a low-frequency envelope for gamma stimulation. Getting all three intact to your ears is what “listening properly” means.
As a rule, plug wired earphones or headphones directly into the phone or computer. “Wired plus a dongle DAC” is better still. That is how lossless WAV and the high frequencies arrive without loss.
To send audio wirelessly, Bluetooth must re-encode it with a codec. The original you carefully kept lossless is compressed a second time on the wireless leg. It is the equivalent of unzipping a file and then saving it as a JPEG — the benefit of the original is spent at that point.
How much you lose depends on the codec (best first): LDAC and aptX Adaptive at top quality > aptX HD > aptX and AAC > SBC, the baseline. LDAC pinned to its highest bitrate comes close, but it is still not truly lossless and its high-frequency reproduction trails a wired connection. On Android, forcing the codec and bitrate to maximum in developer options helps a little.
Bone-conduction sets (Shokz and similar) are comfortable for long sessions, especially for older listeners. But bone conduction itself is limited in high-frequency reproduction, and most models are Bluetooth, so codec loss is layered on top. Great for convenience; not a substitute for wires when the point is high-frequency training.
Listen to BrainHz on wires. If Bluetooth is unavoidable, force a high-quality codec such as LDAC at its top setting — but the full benefit of lossless audio and high frequencies only arrives over a wired connection.
Source
General audio-transmission knowledge compiled for education, based on public information about the lossy behaviour of Bluetooth codecs (SBC, AAC, aptX, LDAC). See also [[what-is-dac]] and [[why-wav-becomes-mp3]].
※ This article summarizes and restructures the key points of the source above.