What are the advantages and disadvantages of Kleer wireless audio technology compared to Bluetooth?
Can you answer this question?
Write Answer
3 ANSWERS
Antony Passemard,*Looking at all wireless technologies (Bluetooth, Kleer, Wifi) for a project I...
7.7k Views*•*Answer featured in*Quartz.
Kleer technology was created a few years ago (around 2006) specifically for sound transmission. It is based on a better technology than Bluetooth but remains a proprietary solution. A Kleer chipset has to be present on both ends of the communication for it to be functional.
Main benefits:
Low bandwidth requirement.*Despite being able to use the same frequency band than Wifi or bluetooth, the requirement for Kleer is a single footprint of 3Mhz, versus 20x1Mhz for bluetooth and 40Mhz for Wifi 802.11n. With a lower requirement, it is easier for the communication to find a clear channel which consequently reduces the risk of interference dramatically.
Low battery consumption.*The Kleer chipset uses much less power than Bluetooth or wifi. With the same battery, a Kleer system (including amplifier and DAC) will consume 3 to 4 times less than bluetooth, which in turns lasts about 3 to 4 times longer.
Up to 4 listeners for one source.*In the same bandwidth, 4 receivers can be used to connect to a single source, which for family sharing is a great benefit.
Lossless transmission of sound. This is one of the main feature of Kleer and related to quality of sound. Kleer is able to send the sound without any compression and therefore no loss in quality. Depending on how competitive technology are used, this may or may not be a benefit. For example, if a sound compressed using lossy technology (MP3, WMA, OGG, etc..) can be transmitted and decompressed on the receiving side only, then compression is only used for transmission and will not have any influence on quality. On the other hand, if a sound source is compressed to be transmitted (for example from a TV), then Kleer has an advantage over competitive technologies. Kleer has a data bandwidth of 2.37Mb/s.
For reference: a 16bit 44Khz-sampled stereo audio (CD quality) requires 1.4112Mb/s.
Low latency of sound.*Transmission of sound by Kleer can be achieved with very little latency. This is particularly important for video soundtrack than need to be in synch. A latency ranging between 45 to 70ms is required to be unnoticeable to the ear. Over this value, users will start experiencing a desynchronization