Japan Audio Society (JAS) has updated its “High-Resolution Audio Wireless” certification to include True Wireless Stereo (TWS) products with independent left and right channels.
The “High-Resolution Audio Wireless” certification, which started on 27 November 2018, is a process that indicates products with sufficient sound quality as high-resolution audio among devices that compress and wirelessly transmit high-resolution audio signals.
It is understood that TWS products with independent left and right channels were excluded when the society began the “High-Resolution Audio Wireless” certification in 2018 due to several concerns. These include concerns of sound quality due to the master/slave configuration of TWS during that time and the likelihood of a slight phase difference between the left and the right audio signals due to independent clocks.
The working group has reached an agreement that a phase differential of ± 50 μs as allowable tolerance to maintain the quality of a High-Resolution Audio Wireless product coupled with the advancement of antenna and Bluetooth technologies as well as maturity in the transmission methods between the transmitter and receivers over the past two years has helped to address these concerns.
As of November 2020, LDAC (Sony Co., Ltd.) and LHDC (Savitech Corp.) are the two certified Bluetooth codecs that have already been adopted by 82 product models across 17 companies where high-resolution audio signals are transmitted via Bluetooth wireless connection. Also, for functions and performance other than wireless transmission, it is necessary to comply with the “High-Resolution Audio” certification requirements.
Since the start of 2020, TWS products with independent left and right channels have slowly replaced those with master/slave configuration as the mainstream offerings, with an increasing trend in Active-Noise Cancellation (ANC). One cannot help but be excited about the pending appearance of “High-Resolution Audio Wireless” certified TWS offerings on LDAC or LHDC resultant from the update to the certification.
