- Acoustune unveils new ATX001 hi-res Bluetooth dongle
- Plugs into USB-C port to enable aptX Lossless and LDAC wireless connections
- Costs $75 / £57 / AU$107, so it's pretty cheap
Acoustune is a Japanese audio company, best known for its wired and wireless in-ear monitors that look like they'd belong on the set of a Transformers movie (and cost roughly their budget too). But its new device looks a lot more normal — and surprisingly affordable.
The company has unveiled the ATX001, which is a wireless dongle you plug into a USB-C port to add aptX Lossless and LDAC audio streaming to that device. In theory you could any kind of device, but the real benefit would be for the best iPhones, which don't already have the features it enables.
The price of this dongle? It'll cost you $75 / £57 / AU$107, which is a small amount less than we imagined. Its Japanese price when it was announced pointed to it being closer to the triple-figure mark, which would still be affordable for this kind of gear — but this price is a real winner.
Repairing an iPhone flaw
The point of a dongle like the Acoustune ATX001 is to make your iPhone compatible with various Bluetooth codecs, that aren't supported natively by Apple.
The ATX001 facilitates the LDAC codec as well AAC, SBC, aptX, aptX Adaptive, aptX HD and aptX Lossless — as long as you have a pair of the best headphones or best earbuds that support these, which is a lot of them.
Unlike Androids, iPhones don't support LDAC or the various aptX codecs, so this dongle will make enjoying 'lossless' wireless audio a lot easier. Amongst audiophiles, such dongles are quite popular as a way to improve audio quality.
We found that Sony's 1000X The Collexion had a clear audio difference using these connections over regular Bluetooth, and iPhone owners couldn't enjoy that, just a recent example of why this kind of thing is useful.
The ATX001 works primarily through a smartphone app, but once it's configured on your mobile, you can use the dongle on other devices, and still control it with your phone. Acoustune lists games consoles or PCs as a possible extra use for the fob, with an in-box USB-A adaptor letting you connect it to various other gadgets.
One useful perk is that the ATX001 has pass-through USB-C. This means you can plug something else into the port — a charger, a connection to your Mac, a games controller — and still enjoy your improved Bluetooth audio.
