Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Sound technology is designed to deliver high-quality, low-latency audio to wireless devices including earbuds, headphones, and compatible devices including smartphones or USB audio dongles.

Now the company says its latest addition to the Snapdragon Sound platform is “optimized for gaming,” with its ability to offer low-latency audio over Bluetooth without the need for a separate, proprietary chip for back-channel voice connections.

In a nutshell, Qualcomm says that its Snapdragon Sound S3 Gen 2 platform has less than 20ms latency for both wireless audio and a voice back-channel, allowing gamers to hear and react to sounds nearly instantly while also talking to their teammates in real-time.

You will need hardware that supports Snapdragon Sound S3 Gen 2 though… which rules out the built-in Bluetooth radios in most laptops and PCs at the moment, so Qualcomm will make the technology available to hardware companies that want to produce USB dongles.

The company says the latest Snapdragon Sound technology isn’t only for gaming. It also supports 24-bit, 96-kHz audio for streaming music over Bluetooth, and Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive audio technology. There’s also support for Auracast broadcasting, allowing you to add a dongle or adapter to your laptop, phone, or TV and broadcast Bluetooth audio to multiple devices simultaneously.

 

 

 

S3 Gen 2 Sound Platform for BT earbuds

low-latest gaming audio over Bluetooth LE

<20 ms latency with voice

  • Allows gaming brands that had been using two-chip solutions (BT + proprietary) to offer a single-radio BT solution
  • 24/96
  • lossless 16-bit, 48K

LE Audio dongle support (doesn’t have to be a dongle though)

 

 

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  1. Snapdragon sound on the 750G with BT stinks right now. Run a 5G radio off of it and it breaks up and causes static in the BT feed. Hey Qualcomm, quit doing 5G on the cheap and using the same ISP for soft radio work that also does codec work.

    Reply

    1. Bluetooth is owned by a non-profit organization, and licenses are available to anyone who wants to use it. Literally the opposite of a monopoly.

      Reply

      1. Ok, so list some non-WiFi, non-dongle, alternatives we have to Bluetooth then.

        Reply