Is Bluetooth any good for audio streaming in my studio?

Bluetooth has certainly become a part of the music production landscape thanks to its use in wireless MIDI products, but could it have a part to play in our audio futures, too?

Probably not, is the two-word answer, and for a couple of crucial reasons. Firstly, there’s the issue of latency, a problem that computerbased musicians have spent years trying to overcome; and then there’s its quality. When audio is sent wirelessly over Bluetooth, it’s compressed and, to put it bluntly, doesn’t sound as good as when it’s piped down a cable.

You also have to ask yourself what the benefits of using Bluetooth for audio would be. Chances are that your monitors are sitting right in front of you in your studio – is running cables to them from your audio interface really that much of an issue? Sure, they might look a bit untidy, but that’s about the extent of the ‘problem’.

Of course, the spotlight has fallen on Bluetooth again recently now that Apple have omitted the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 (we’d expect it to fall off iPads and possibly even Macs at some point in the future, too). However, the company are still bundling the phone with earphones that have a Lightning connector and an adaptor for your regular 3.5mm-jacked cans, so it’s not exactly like they’re saying ‘wireless or nothing’.

As a side note, though, if you do plug your wired headphones in via the Lightning connector, you won’t have the option to plug anything else – a MIDI controller keyboard, for example – in at the same time. So, you’ll need another adaptor of some sort if that’s your plan: we assume third-party manufacturers will come up with solutions to this problem in due course.