Qualcomm donates aptX and aptX HD codec source code to Android AOSP

Sony has previously contributed its own LDAC codec to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which can be used by all Android smartphones unless there are special reasons.

Following LDAC, Qualcomm’s aptX and aptX HD audio encoders are also expected to go open source.

According to developer Mishaal Rahman, Qualcomm has just submitted a patch to AOSP that includes the source code for their aptX and aptX HD encoders .

No license is listed yet, hopefully it’s a licensable one.

@MishaalRahman also said that now that aptX and aptX HD have been submitted to AOSP, the hope is to allow more OEMs and suppliers to support aptX and aptX HD encoding on their devices.

For example, the encoder for Sony’s proprietary BT audio codec LDAC appears in AOSP for this reason.

 current Bluetooth audio codecs mainly include the following, namely SBC, AAC, aptX (including aptX, aptX LL, aptX HD and aptX Adaptive), LDAC, and HWA.

aptX is a digital audio compression algorithm based on sub-band ADPCM (SB-ADPCM) technology, first proposed by Dr. Stephen Smyth in the 1980s, and further developed by CSR, and named aptX.

In essence, aptX, like the above SBC and AAC, is also an audio coding format, but because of its low latency, it gradually shows its excellent side in the field of Bluetooth transmission.

 Since then, CSR was acquired by Qualcomm, so today it is often written as Qualcomm aptX.