With the rise in popularity of wireless headphones and earbuds, a lot of technical terms have come along with them. From wireless charging to Bluetooth multipoint, wear sensors, ANC and transparency, ...

I've been a contributing editor for PCMag since 2011. Before that, I was PCMag's lead audio analyst from 2006 to 2011. Even though I'm a freelancer now, PCMag has been my home for well over a decade, ...

Have you ever overheard someone casually talking about their preferred audio codecs, or perhaps questioning the value of one model of wireless earbuds versus another because of the audio codecs they ...

Smartphone manufacturers all but took away our beloved phones with headphone jacks. Now we’re left buying admittedly great wireless earbuds hand over fist. But listening to music is no longer a ...

It’s been 3-plus years since the MPEG codec explosion that brought us VVC, LCEVC, and EVC. Rather than breathlessly trumpet every single-digit quality improvement or design win, I’ll quickly get you ...

Still gaming or streaming music over SBC like it’s 2005? Get the real scoop on which Bluetooth codecs — AAC, aptX, LDAC, or LHDC — are actually worth your ears. If you’re streaming hi-res audio tracks ...

Streaming platforms and video services have long relied on open-source codecs like x264, x265, SVT-AV1, libaom, and libvp9, all readily available in FFmpeg. For many users, these codecs offer ...

Maintaining a Windows-based PC has, in most respects, gotten easier over the years. OS 'hackability' (the bad kind) has dropped, and Windows Update has become a terrific tool for minimal-intervention ...

Xvid is rarely used these days, but that means it can be hard to know what to do with it if you come across it while digging through your old files. It’s essentially a method for compressing video, ...

The tech industry has been abuzz with chatter about AV1 encoding recently. There are bold claims about how it will revolutionize streaming video, game streaming, and the Internet at large—but what is ...

Samsung Scalable Codec, often known as SSC, is Samsung's proprietary codec that provides high-quality audio streaming over Bluetooth. Samsung revamped its TWS (Total Wireless Stereo) lineup in 2019 ...

I'm having an issue where I can't figure out what codec the 360 supports. I have converted a few of my DVDS (using AnyDVD and Handbrake) using both xvid and h.264 (avi container) with a bitrate of ...