What is the difference (in terms of music format) between a wireless headphone vs. a wired one? The information that they receive is the same?
In: Technology
Wired headphones are just speakers attached to wires, which are attached to a jack connector. They recieve a power-amplified signal from a power amplifier.
Wireless headphones recieve audio over radio waves, which don’t have enough energy to drive speakers. For this reason all wireless headphones contain a power amplifier to drive the speakers. If the audio signal over the radio link is digital, it will be decompressed (if it is compressed) and converted to analog by a digital-to-analog converter (DAC).
Assuming the source is a music app running on a phone, the most common setups nowadays are:
**Wired**
Music app -> codec in phone to decompress -> DAC in phone to convert to analog -> power amplifier in phone to drive headphones -> headphone jack -> headphone cable -> headphone speakers
**Wireless**
Music app-> transcoder to convert to different compressed format usable by headphones -> encoding for sending over wireless link -> radio baseband -> radio modulator -> radio power amplifier -> radio transmitter antenna in phone -> air -> radio antenna in headphones -> radio receiver preamp -> radio demodulator -> error correction for corruption in transmission -> decompression of digital audio -> audio DAC to convert to analog audio -> power amplifier to drive speakers -> headphone speakers.
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