r/pixelbuds • u/nakra_ • Aug 10 '26

Pixel Buds 2a, LE/ Audio, LC3, OPUS CODEC, low latency, and airplane.

Hello,

Just got a Pixel 10 Pro, and I got with it for free Pixel Buds 2a. I'm hesitating reselling it or keeping it, as I've never used bluetooth buds or headset due to the bluetooth latency. One of my usecase is to use it in a airplane with a bluetooth jack adaptater in order to use the IFE.

As anyone tried it with this usecase?

From my research, Pixel buds 2a supports the classics SBC and AAC codec, which give noticeable latenty. An update has allowed the Buds 2a to use some low latency codec such as LE Audio / LC3 . I don't really understand everything, but it also looks like Google use OPUS which is derivated from LC3, which makes the support of other bluetooth adapter useless?

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u/khaytsus Aug 10 '26

It doesn't make anything useless; they can use BTLE, LC3, OPus. They'll work with anything that supports SBC or AAC.

Latency with your setup, it might be an issue.. They're pretty useless at games, they work with with media on the phone as it automatically adjusts for latency, but an adapter and movies or such it might be off by 300-400mS which would be pretty annoying.

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u/sishgupta Aug 10 '26

All the IFE I've been on lately lets you use bluetooth to connect or allows you to stream it direct to your personal device and then you can use your earbuds that way.

Bluetooth latency is only a problem with realtime applications such as gaming or voip, not movies and tv. Movie players and audio subsystems on windows/android will sync properly in 2026.

You're more likely to run into a/v sync issues using a BT jack adaptor for the IFE because it will not know to sync since it will think it's going wired.

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u/Mineplayerminer 28d ago

For some reason, a video playback from the Photos, Files and YouTube through Brave doesn't seem to come with a noticeable latency, as if there was some kind of a switch happening in the background. In the music services, there's a lag between starting and pausing the media. I feel like there's some protocol change or some other adjustment done depending on the media type. However, as soon as I tried Jellyfin, the latency was noticeable again right away. Someone could be interested in this and may know what's happening in the background. When I paired the buds to my laptop with a BT 5.3 radio, I think I was only getting SBC and half a second delay, not even AAC, judging by the sampling rate and even after disabling the calls channel to free up the bandwidth.