When it comes to audio quality in the panorama of TWS headphones, the various proposals of Apple but also of Huawei immediately come to mind, forgetting that Xiaomi boasts in its portfolio some models that reach the sound performance of the most balmy rivals, at a third of their price. . This is possible thanks to the LHDC low latency codec that will now be integrated on the very recent Xiaomi Mi Air 2 Pro.
Recall that the LHDC codec was added for the first time on a Xiaomi device, or on the Mi 9 Pro 5G model, a terminal that we have never officially seen on our market, as it is dedicated to the Asian one. In terms of sound quality, the LHDC Hi-Res codec manages to transmit high resolution audio up to 24 bit / 96 KHz at 900 Kbps, practically 3 times higher than the traditional Bluetooth SBC codec (328 Kbps). LHDC is a Sony proprietary standard and is currently one of the most qualitative protocols, so much so that it has received certification from the Japan Music Association.
The latency is really zeroed thus offering top performance even during gaming, although for these solutions the best choice is always to use wired headphones. Traditional SBC Bluetooth encoding and decoding provides audio and video delay that typically reaches 400ms, while the LHDC solution reduces this latency to 80ms, which greatly improves audio and video synchronization in games and multimedia content in general.
Xiaomi Mi Air 2 Pro: support for the LHDC low latency codec is coming
With the advent of MIUI 12 there are now many smartphones that can benefit from it, such as in my case a Xiaomi Mi Note 10, so even not quite recent but returning to the Xiaomi Mi Air 2 Pro, the support for the LHDC codec comes through in an internal beta, developed with the collaboration of 1More. Considering that an error could permanently compromise the functioning of the product, the company has preferred to proceed with caution, so a definitive release will only take place when the test phase is successfully passed.
In any case, the news marks another important aspect linked to the Chinese brand, namely the attention it places in the care of its devices, even simple TWS headphones that can improve with firmware support, indeed Xiaomi is marking a new standard, which will soon lead to the adoption by rival headphones of the LHDC codec, raising the quality of low-cost headphones on a par with premium products.
