1. Would I be correct in assuming that a smartphone audio output on BT via the A2DP protocol is in fact a audio bit-stream, decoded from MP3/WMA/AAC/Whatever into a... PCM audio stream (+metadata info), I guess? Or, maybe, in some other format? So, would I be correct in assuming that the receiving device, be it a Parrot Asteroid for example, would then do the DAC part?
I'm not an expert on A2DP by any stretch, but I do use it quite a bit between my phone and a JVC KW-NT50HDT head unit.
The way I understand A2DP to work is there are a bunch of codecs than can be negotiated between devices. There is no PCM bitstream possible over A2DP, so everything is re-encoded in a lossy format before being sent over the Bluetooth link.
In my opinion, audio over A2DP can either sound OK or crappy... never great. The set of hardware you're using seems to be the biggest variable. There is a somewhat new codec called
apt-X which is supposed to produce the best sound over A2DP, but I don't own a source or destination A2DP device that supports it. The
HTC StereoClip does, but this isn't the type of device you're looking for.
My JVC head unit supports A2DP AVRCP v1.3 profile only, so I cannot browse the music library of a connected device. AVRCP v1.3 provides metadata and playback control only. You would be shocked at how many phones don't support even this much. I would be interested to learn what devices actually support AVRCP v1.4 right now.
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