Your Pixel phone now supports high-res Bluetooth audio — here's how to use it

When it comes to listening to music over Bluetooth, there are only really two camps: those who plug in, play, and think everything sounds great out of the box, and those who are compelled to ensure they’re listening to pristine sound (as much as Bluetooth will allow).

There’s good news for those golden ears among you, as the arrival of Android 17 has also brought LHDC Bluetooth codec support to Google’s Pixel handsets. If you’re curious what this new option is and what it means for your listening habits, then you’ve come to the right place.

What is LHDC, and what can it do?

The Low Latency High-Definition Audio Codec (LHDC) is not actually a new wireless audio technology. HWA Alliance promoted it as a high-quality Bluetooth audio codec all the way back in September 2018. Since then, it’s been adopted across a range of audio products, from earbuds and headphones to home audio stations, and even in our smartphones. This feature is only really new to Google’s recent Pixel flagships, and even then, it was announced back in March.

Still, in June 2024, the Japan Audio Society (JAS) certified LHDC with its Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification. It joins the ranks of aptX Adaptive and LDAC as a high-bitrate capable codec considered transparent enough to transmit Hi-Res audio over the air. But how exactly does it do that?

LHDC has a few specifications variations: LHDC-48K (16bit/48kHz ~400kbps), LHDC-96K (24bit/96kHz ~1000kbps), LHDC-192K (24bit/192kHz ~1000kbps), and LHDC-RAW (24bit/96kHz ~4600kbps). On paper, those all look like very high-end options, but astute readers will know that even 1000 kbps is pushing the limits of a stable Bluetooth connection. But we’ll get more into that in a minute.

For Google’s Pixel, LHDC supports 96kHz playback, but other Android devices can hit 192kHz. We saw this option when pairing the OnePlus 16 with OnePlus Buds 4 back on Android 16.

The audiophiles among you may have noticed that 1,000 kbps is not even enough for a raw 16-bit 44.1kHz stereo track (1,411 kbps) and would be tight even with Level-8 FLAC lossless compression applied. 24-bit, 96kHz tracks or anything with a 192kHz sample rate is out of the question without compression. Despite the Hi-Res credentials, neither LHDC nor any other Bluetooth codec can push lossless high-resolution audio over a bandwidth-limited Bluetooth connection.

Unfortunately, there is no public information about exactly how LHDC achieves its compression levels while retaining high musical fidelity. Part of the trick is that LHDC supports a variable bitrate, ranging from 160 kbps to 1,000 kbps, but that’s about all we know.

My educated guess is that there’s an element of quantization noise shaping that sacrifices imperceptible details at the highest frequencies to save bandwidth, combined with more traditional approaches to sub-band compression and variable-bit encoding. This would fulfill LHDC’s aims of maintaining high audio quality while enabling low-latency encoding and scalable compression. But exactly how well this scales down to 160kbps without advanced psychoacoustic modeling would make for an interesting test.

High bitrate meets Bluetooth limits

One of the big problems with Bluetooth audio is that the connection can be unreliable. Unlike wired connections, Bluetooth link quality varies with the radio environment you’re listening in, the number of other devices nearby, and even the enclosure attenuation of your devices.

To ensure that Hi-Res codecs continue to work without irritating drops, outages, or glitches, LHDC and its contemporaries, LDAC and aptX Lossless, implement dynamic bitrate scaling. In other words, audio quality scales directly with the connection quality of your Bluetooth link.

Listening via LHDC on a radio-congested subway train will likely result in lower audio quality than in a quiet home environment, for no other reason than that the bitrate will scale down to as low as 160 kbps to avoid the link dropping out.

So it’s not only worth considering the maximum bitrate of the codec you plan to use, but also how it sounds in less-than-perfect listening environments. Unfortunately, because radio quality varies widely between individual earbuds and handsets, it is impossible to know without pairing the two and listening. In any case, the takeaway is that just because LHDC claims to support 192kHz audio doesn’t mean it’ll sound better than those equally nice LDAC or aptX Lossless headphones. In fact, there might be times it doesn’t sound much better than AAC either.

How to listen to Hi-Res content via LHDC

While LHDC is a great pick for high-quality wireless audio, your listening setup is limited by the weakest link in the chain.

For starters, you need a pair of earbuds or headphones that support LHDC. While there are plenty of options on the market, many are from China and other Asian markets. The OnePlus Buds Pro series and Nothing Ear 2 are two popular examples from Android brands. Unfortunately, the Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 don’t support LHDC, even if your Pixel can now technically support the codec via its Android 17 update. And that leads to the second part: you need a phone that supports the codec as well. Again, Android handsets from China often support LHDC, and now Google’s newest Pixels support the technology, provided you’re running Android 17. However, Galaxy and iPhone owners are out of luck, for now.

An important note: to ensure your devices use LHDC to transmit audio, you’ll need to go to your phone’s Bluetooth Developer Settings menu. From here, you can see available codecs for your currently paired device and configure sample rates and other settings. For most users, though, Android should automatically handle the best possible connections.

The final piece of the puzzle is media that makes the most of LHDC’s capabilities. An on-device FLAC collection is a good start, but today we’re also spoiled for choice for Hi-Res streaming options. 24-bit 96kHz is more than even the most golden of ears can hear, but most modern Android phones will also support 192kHz playback. However, note that Pixel owners will likely be limited to the phone’s upper 96kHz LHDC playback option regardless.

Finally, you don’t have to own or stream a Hi-Res music collection to benefit from LHDC. A CD-quality FLAC, or even high-bitrate AAC or OGG, is largely indistinguishable from the highest-bit-rate formats. Having a high-quality, adaptable link between your source and output is beneficial even for lower-res music files, ensuring they’re not recompressed into an inferior form.

The arrival of LHDC is perhaps a long-overdue upgrade for Pixel owners, but a welcome one nonetheless. While it doesn’t change the game compared to the already high-quality LC3, aptX, and LDAC codecs that Pixel owners already enjoy, LHDC support ensures that an even wider range of earbuds and headphones can play back your tunes with the highest possible quality from your Pixel phones. That’s a nice win, regardless of whether you’re an audiophile or a more casual music lover.