Samsung UWB May Revolutionize Lossless/Wireless Headphones: But For Who?

Ultra-Wideband (UWB) is a radio technology with a long history dating back to the earliest experiments by Heinrich Hertz in the 1880s. But digital applications are where we see UWB's greatest potential. Today, UWB has been making waves thanks to its fine ranging capabilities featured in some Apple iOS and Samsung Galaxy smartphones—an area being standardized by the FiRa Consortium. Using UWB signals, the smartphone can track an object attached to another UWB transceiver to within 4-inches (10-cm). The feature has been popularized thanks to relatively inexpensive UWB chips found in the small, keychain sized Apple AirTags and Samsung SmartTags. Apple's U1 UWB chip is cheap enough to stick into AirTags and sell for a the uncharacteristically low price of just $30. It's a little disappointing to see Apple, the company that sells a $130 USB cable, not asking at least $99.99 for an AirTag. But low-cost UWB transceiver chips could mean that more companies are looking into UWB and investing in what may come next from the technology.

With UWB chips already turning smartphones into tracking devices, audiophiles are eager for the next UWB implementation in high-bandwidth wireless streaming. According to its theoretical capabilities the technology has the potential to over-air stream uncompressed, lossless & hi-res LPCM directly to a pair of wireless headphones. But despite rumors and recent advances by UWB tech engineers, we’re still waiting for proper Ultra-WideBand (UWB) wireless headphones that can playback music using your smartphone as source, free of dongles and other third party attachments that will repel mainstream consumers like an improvisational jazz playlist. Samsung, the South Korean tech giant that’s already using UWB tracking in its smartphones recently filed a patent offering a glimmer of hope that this time, the wireless revolution may be just around the corner.

Samsung to Enter UWB 

The South Korean technology juggernaut’s patent appears fit the requirements of audiophiles and average tech consumers alike by bringing UWB wireless audio to headphones or earbuds using a smartphone as source without intermediary devices. Although we’ve been disappointed by rumors of pending UWB audio breakthroughs before, but with Samsung there’s reason for optimism. The company that builds everything from washing machines to oil tankers is perhaps better known for its Galaxy smartphone line. Since acquiring Harman in 2016, Samsung’s commitment to high-performance audio is bigger than most independent audio companies. Even before the Harman acquisition Samsung had already built a sophisticated audio R&D lab in California and poached top Harman engineer, Allan Devantier to run it with a mandate to; “...take Samsung’s audio technology to the top of the industry.” It seems inevitable that Samsung’s UWB headphone research will bring high-performance wireless audio to its Galaxy mobile ecosystem.

Pros/Cons of Functional UWB Audio

As a radio technology, Ultra WideBand (UWB) is unique in the way it sends pulses rather than continuous sine waves like AM/FM or Bluetooth. Its pulses of radio energy can be sent at speeds up to 2-nano-seconds apart, making UWB a natural fit for virtually lag free data transmissions. The “wide” in ultra WideBand refers to its operation at an ultra-wide range of frequencies from 3.1 through 10.6-GHz through which it sends its pulses. When used for short-range communication it can act as a Personal Area Network (PAN), similar to Bluetooth or NFC while operating on comparatively very low power, making it well-suited for battery powered portable devices. UWB has a similar optimal range to Bluetooth—at about 10 meters or 32 feet between devices—but its latency is dramatically lower, measured in nanoseconds instead of milliseconds. UWB latency can be less than 5-ns compared to Bluetooth’s 34-to-200-ms. This incredibly low latency means a virtually lag-free sync for audio/video applications. The result is video free of those lip-sync issues that make anything you watch look like a foreign film voice-over.

But employing UWB for portable audio is not without its challenges. Perhaps the biggest barrier is in UWB's high frequencies that making its signals susceptible to interference from actual physical barriers like walls. This problem isn’t unique to Ultra-WideBand, all radio frequencies greater than 6.5-GHz are susceptible to absorption by walls and especially water-rich materials, and that's a serious problem for wearable audio systems. Transmitting UWB to your headphones from a phone in your back pocket can create a situation UWB engineers call “body blocking”. That’s when UWB’s signals must pass-through what one Star Trek Next-Gen episode's crystalline aliens derisively call our “ugly bags of mostly water”, our own bodies can destabilize the connection.

STNG Episode: Home Soil. High freq crystalline entities operating at high freqs frustrated by "body blocking"

There are now workaround for body blocking that don’t involve increasing signal power. A company called Antennaware has developed body blocking solutions for various close-range RF designs and in 2022 the company launched a BodyWave antenna to help wearable UWB devices overcome drop-outs and inconsistent connections.

Audio Data Rates: Bluetooth vs. UWB 

Red Book’s CD-quality audio, widely held as the gold standard for lossless hi-fi recordings, streams at a bit-depth and frequency of 16-bit/44.1kHz LPCM and requires data-speeds up to 1.4-megabits per-second (Mbps). Not even today’s most advanced Bluetooth codecs can match it, including Qualcomm’s aptX Lossless or Sony’s LDAC, which peak at 1.2-Mbps and 990-kbps respectively. UWB can out-pace both Bluetooth codecs simultaneously with one arm tied behind its back. According to the Telecommunication Engineering Center, in theory UWB:  

“...supports a bit rate greater than 100 Mbps within a 10-meter radius for wireless personal area communications.”

Qualcomm aptX Lossless broke the Bluetooth 1Mbps barrier - but still compressed!

Even if practical consumer-grade chip designs only use a fraction of that 100-Mbps capability, UWB has the potential to far exceed Red Book CD-quality and easily handle 24-bit/192-kHz hi-res FLAC files that can chew through just under 10-Mbps. 

But…You Can’t Even Hear the Difference! 

Before telling me that human ears can’t perceive the benefits in high-resolution audio, I know. In most situations you’re right. But if a higher bandwidth option is available at a sufficiently trivial cost difference—count me in! Bluetooth always introduces compression that I’d prefer to avoid. Although, the technology's capability is no guarantee that every UWB implementation will be compression-free, we’ll have to judge results on a case-by-case basis.

Of course, looking forward to a new higher data-rate wireless technology takes nothing away from the advances made in Bluetooth technology. Qualcomm and Sony’s codecs have surpassed sound quality most of us would have thought possible. They perform remarkably using a wireless protocol developed in 1994 specifically to de-clutter desktop computer mouse and keyboard cables. But from what we can see of Samsung’s UWB headphone patent, the humble Bluetooth codec may continue to play an important role.

Samsung UWB Audio Patent 

The patent filed on Jan, 30 2025 includes diagrams of both over-ear headphones and in-ear monitors (earbuds) using UWB. Samsung's plan appears to harness Bluetooth’s well-established infrastructure in some way. Figure 2 indicates that the UWB connection involves an initial Bluetooth connection between the source device and a single primary earphone before the UWB connection is established to that primary then a second UWB connection is made to the secondary earphone to complete a stereo UWB network. Then Bluetooth disconnects, leaving the user with pure UWB sound quality. 

Samsung US Patent Diagram

Connection instructions beginning with Bluetooth connection to one earphone.

Idle speculation: It's possible Bluetooth’s role in establishing the UWB connection helps save energy by only turning on UWB when requested. Samsung's patent will no doubt result in its own proprietary UWB format and I hope it takes off. But perhaps a future collaboration or a UWB consortium will help to fully develop the technology's broad use across the consumer electronics industry. It'd be nice to see UWB one day become as ubiquitous as Bluetooth today.

UWB Home Audio Speakers  

The Samsung diagram with its UWB connection between earcups is not unlike a recent Focal/NAIM development. Focal’s new high-end powered speaker system, Diva Utopia is a rare practical application of UWB audio already in commercial use today. Diva Utopia uses UWB in a wireless 24-bit/96-kHz connection between the two speakers, but that’s where similarities to a portable headphone application ends. At 141-lbs the Divas are anything but portable, these Divas will require your full-time attention if you tried to take them anywhere. While Diva Utopia can receive audio from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a variety of hard-wired options including HDMI eARC, they’re not designed for a UWB source. But if I ever found myself streaming music in Bluetooth to these speakers, I'd feel ripped off!

Focal Diva Utopia powered speakers w/ NAIM electronics: Featuring hi-res wireless cross-speaker UWB at 24-bit/96-kHz.

The Spark Microsystems UWB chip that Focal/NAIM chose for the Diva Utopias creates a compelling use case for UWB audio. The wireless L/R speaker communication uses Spark’s SR1020 radio chip capable of data-rates of up to 10Mbps over a secure and relatively noise-free, high-band spectrum from 6-GHz to 9.1-GHz. 

Unfulfilled Rumors of UWB Headphones

It's Feb. 2023 and legendary speaker company PSB announces the development of a wireless UWB headphone in partnership with MQA and Sonical, providing an estimated release in Q1 2024. A lot happened in the intervening months, but the PSB UWB headphones did not ship.  

Things weren’t looking good for MQA during the course of 2023. Premium music streamer and MQA-booster, Tidal had already been replacing its MQA library with true lossless and hi-res FLAC files, moving away from MQA’s compressed streaming algorithm. Tidal’s transfer to FLAC would be complete in the summer 2024 and Tidal users rejoiced. By this time, MQA had already been taking criticism as audio enthusiast measurements around the Internet revealed that it wasn't exactly a pristine lossless format.

We don't know if being jilted by Tidal had anything to do with it, but MQA filed for bankruptcy only about a month after PSB’s UWB headphone announcement. PSB’s UWB headphone launch may have seemed cursed, but in a surprise move, the speaker company's parent, Lenbrook purchased MQA in late 2023. Sonical still seems like a reliable partner for developing UWB audio technology as it has continues building momentum in that space, so maybe the collaboration will be resurrected someday. But for now, the PSB’s press-announcement now returns a 404 error. We can only assume the project is on hold indefinitely.

Three caballeros collaborate. But so far, no UWB headphones.

Apple UWB Audio, Denied!

Online sleuths were teased by Apple way back in 2022 when buzz in headphone communities suggested that Apple may be first to break into UWB audio, and there was plenty of evidence for those of us who—wanted to believe! Apple has a high-tech audio lab of its own, overseen by Apple VP of Acoustics, Gary Geaves. The iPhone 11's U1 UWB chip was already two years old and its AirTag feature proved a solid hit for Apple, everyone from chronic car-key misplacers to underhanded car thieves all found it useful.

Samsung Galaxy SmartTag & Apple AirTag

Then, in Sept 2022 Apple VP of Acoustics, Gary Geaves dropped evidence for a UWB audio implementation in an interview where he said:  

“...so we have to concentrate very hard on squeezing the most that we can out of the Bluetooth technology, and there’s a number of tricks we can play to maximise or get around some of the limits of Bluetooth. But it’s fair to say that we would like more bandwidth and… I’ll stop right there. We would like more bandwidth”, he smiles. 

Keep in mind that at the time of the quote, Apple Music had just relaunched its entire library in lossless and hi-res. Many of us expected Apple was finally going to raise the bar on its wireless sound quality. Apple’s wireless audio had far too long ignored advances in Bluetooth, even in its premium $500 wireless headphone, AirPods Max. Apple Music may have gone lossless/hi-res, but its own wireless hardware was stuck with a 30-year old Bluetooth codec, AAC that peaks at a lossy 256-kbps. Apple optimists were certain that a future iPhone UWB chip would deliver the bandwidth Geaves was looking for, assuming it would bring lossless/hi-res to new Apple headphones. But Apple’s market research may have disagreed with investing in the R&D merely Apple Music's lossless 2-Channel sound.

ABC News crew breaches tight security at Apple HQ Audio Labs

Our hopes for streaming Apple UWB audio were dashed with the launch of a new pair of AirPods. The model, confusingly named AirPods Pro 2 w/ USB-C arrived in Sept. 2023 with a new H2 chip capable of receiving lossless over-air audio. But Apple accomplished this feat without one pulse of UWB. Instead Apple did the work of cutting its very own wireless protocol from whole cloth. An incredible feat of brute-force engineering, but not UWB.

The Apple H2 chip runs a proprietary 5-GHz wireless protocol capable of streaming Apple’s lossless ALAC codec at an unusual but effective resolution of 20-bit/48-kHz. That’s a true lossless stream and technically hi-res, Apple seems to have taken my own advice from 2021 by developing over-air ALAC streaming. The Apple-user dream of wire-free true lossless hi-fi had finally come to pass, but with a high-priced catch!

First, the 48-kHz audio sample rate Apple routinely uses in its ecosystem, including in the new H2 protocol may imply an intention for digital video and film, even if its perfectly suited for lossless/hi-res music. The Audio Engineering Society (AES) and Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) both adopted 48-kHz as a digital audio standard for professional video.

The catch is that the new AirPods Pro 2 USB won’t stream Apple’s lossless ALAC music files from your iPhone. For now, the only way to access ALAC with the new AirPods is to connect them to Apple’s Vision Pro VR headset. Yes, you can still pair the AirPods Pro 2 USB to your iPhone, but you’ll only stream AAC. It’s a fair prediction that future iPhones will transmit Apple’s wireless 5-GHz protocol to the new AirPods Pro2 USB, along with a new line of Apple wireless audio products including a new Lossless AirPod Max. I'd be surprised if engineers at Apple aren't already hard at work on a new, more energy efficient 5-Ghz chip for new iOS devices.

So it appears that Geaves’ desire for “more bandwidth” was less about 2-channel hi-fi audio and more about DSP. Apple surely does its market research before a major project like creating its own proprietary wireless protocol. The company may have anticipated demand for a low-latency, binaural rendition of Spatial Audio in a Vision Pro accessory that it hopes will bring personal home theater to the masses. There is likely no groundswell of Apple-users chomping at the bit for wireless ALAC from Apple Music. But when iPhones can stream its 5-gHz wireless protocol it will likely be strategically released alongside a new line of AirPods featuring a new H3 chip.

Conclusion

For now, I'll hold out hope that Samsung nails UWB audio, even if only used in its Galaxy ecosystem at first. Hopefully it's open to licensing and competition from other manufacturers that  further secures Android as the platform of choice for wireless digital audio. If a future line of Harman's AKG, JBL or HK headphones were released featuring Samsung's UWB, I'll definitely want to give them listen. 

But like Apple's proprietary format, a Galaxy UWB will likely focus squarely on wireless AV-entertainment in a Dolby Atmos or spatial audio DSP, with only a side-order of lossless 2-channel audio. But, to strain an Adam Smith metaphor: The rising tide of digital-throughput raises all sonic boats. As long as you can turn off DSP, I’d try any UWB implementation that can deliver uncompressed lossless 2-channel audio to a good pair of wireless headphones, free of dongles and other third party attachments. I might even decide to try out an improvisational jazz playlist.