Everyone into A2DP and stereo, wireless Bluetooth headphones knows the
Microsoft Bluetooth stack, quality-wise, used to be WAY worse than that of
competing products (Widcomm / Broadcom on Windows Mobile; Nokia and other
products on other platforms). I've thoroughly elaborated on this issue in
the Comparison & thorough compliance report of three stereo Bluetooth
headphones: Nokia HS-12W, Plantronics Pulsar 590 and 260 and previous
articles. Note that you WILL want to read at least this article - it may
answer a LOT of your A2DP-related questions.

Fortunately, there IS light at the end of the tunnel. Upon seeing THIS
XDA-Dev thread (linked from THIS thread at MoDaCo), I've made some very
thorough tests with the new, WM6 Bluetooth implementation and was VERY
pleased with the results.

Yes, the new WM6 (as far as REAL, official WM6 versions are concerned and
NOT illegal, "cooked" ROM's, some of which still having the pre-WM6,
low-quality A2DP implementation) indeed delivers a vast quality increase.

Listening to any music with singing was pretty much impossible with the MS
BT stack back in the WM5 days (with an incompatible pair of headphones; don't
forget that, as has also been pointed out in my already-linked article, the
A2DP implementation of WM5 delivers excellent results with already
compatible A2DP headphones like the Nokia HS-12W); now, with WM6, the sound
quality is pretty much close to that of the Widcomm (Broadcom) BT stack. It's
only audiophiles (like me) that will notice the VERY slightly lower sound
quality with the new, WM6 implementation; ordinary people not really.

Again, the sound quality of the new A2DP implementation is orders of
magnitude better (again, I only speak about incompatible headphones, NOT
about compatible ones like the already-mentioned Nokia HS-12W! Keep this in
mind when I speak about the bad sound quality of pre-WM6 A2DP
implementation) than that of ANY WM5-based Pocket PC's or Smartphones. This
means you can, finally, dump Widcomm hacks or Widcomm-based handhelds in
favor of new, WM6-based phones.

What about pre-WM6 Windows Mobile models?

After Microsoft introduced A2DP support in January 2006 with WM5 AKU2, the
vast majority (exceptions include, for example, the HTC Wizard, which has
never officially received any A2DP support) of new models (and operating
system upgrades for existing ones) coming with the Microsoft BT stack (that
is, all WM5 models except for Acer's and HP's models and the Fujitsu-Siemens
T830 phone) have been released with A2DP support.

The A2DP sound quality of WM5 AKU2 devices was terrible. It was only with
VERY few headphones models (for example, the already-mentioned Nokia HS-12W)
that it delivered good sound quality. The vast majority of existing A2DP
stereo headphones models (for example, the Plantronics Pulsar 590 and 260)
were plain useless with the stack.



continued at:
http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/ind...&c=1&tb=1&pb=1


--


--
Werner "Menneisyys" Ruotsalainen - Microsoft MVP - Windows - Mobile Devices
Please see the Pocket PC Mag Expert Blog (including mine) at
http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/ - you will definitely like it.