Microsoft is promising to make Bluetooth audio much better in Windows 11

Although Bluetooth audio has evolved quite a bit over time and most people, especially casual listeners, wouldn't be able to differentiate between audio coming from a wireless Bluetooth device versus a wired peripheral, there is a still a long way to go and lots of room for improvement. Microsoft is aiming to improve the situation a bit in this regarding with upcoming releases of Windows 11.

Microsoft has explained that Bluetooth audio quality is fairly low because Bluetooth Classic Audio offers two profiles. The first is Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP), which prioritizes quality but doesn't allow use of the microphone, and the second is Hands-Free Profile (HFP), which enables the microphone at the cost of lower fidelity audio. So, there is no way in this classic technology to have both high-fidelity audio and a functioning microphone. The technology is a couple of decades old, and while HFP in particular has received some improvements, a major drawback in it is that it does not support stereo playback.

To tackle these problems, Microsoft has announced that it is working on a new feature in Windows 11, that enables Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio peripherals to play high-fidelity audio in stereo while having a functioning microphone too. This is a modern architecture that replaces both A2DP and HFP with flexible profiles that have a better compression algorithm and a "super wideband" audio fidelity at a bi-directional 32kHz sample rate while using voice, which means that audio won't be muffled anymore. As a trivia, super wideband audio sampling maxes out at 16kHz unidirectionally.

This should result in crisp audio across gaming sessions and spatial audio in Teams calls. Microsoft has described this technology as a game-changer and stated that it will be working with PC partners and Bluetooth Audio device-makers to enable this functionality on a wider scale.

In order to leverage superwide band (SWB) Bluetooth LE Audio for voice/speech, you'll need to be running at least Windows 11, version 24H2 (not all Bluetooth LE features require 24H2), but Microsoft says that PC- and audio device-makers will need to release driver updates to take advantage of super wideband Bluetooth LE Audio later in the year.

The Redmond tech firm expects new PCs released in late 2025 to support this technology out-of-the-box. Microsoft began testing Bluetooth LE earlier this year in Insider builds, but it's nice to have more concrete information about general availability at this point.

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Posted Thursday 28 August 2025 at 5:16 am AEST (my time).

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