The AAC codec via bluetooth is of poor quality.

[julianforero]

When playing music via bluetooth with the AAC codec in the One UI 6.1 OS, the audio sounds as if it were overly compressed, it is as if the audio track was at 96 Kbps, guitars, cymbals sound very bad. For example, the song I Wanna Love You with Snoop Dogg by Akon; Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana or Don't Cry by Guns N' Roses.

It is better to use SBC codec which is of lower quality than AAC, but the quality improves notably.

And from what I saw in other posts, this has been happening since One UI 5 and no matter if Samsung Fold or Samsung S series, it's apparently an OS problem.

NOTE: I have a Samsung Galaxy S23 with One UI 6.1, Android 14.

[TechZilla]

What headphones or earbuds are you using with your phone? I definitely don't have this problem with my phone, AAC works as it should.

[miguelcosta94]

Yes! It sounds very bad since Android 13. Unfortunately, this is a problem from the Android itself as I've tested with Pixel and Xiaomi phones and they also have this issue. I ended paying for an App called Bluetooth Codec Changer that automatically switches my AAC buds/headphones to SBC.

[Nagoli]

I replaced my galaxy buds 2 pro to OnePlus buds 3 pro so it works better with my iPhone I have use occasionally alongside my galaxy S23. I almost immediately noticed that the buds sound significantly worse on the S23.

As others also pointed out there are clearly audible compression artifacts on AAC that are not there on the iPhone. If I switch to SBC in the developer options the artifacts go away, but it will still sound worse than the iPhone.

I tried my daughter's Xiaomi 12 which supports LHDC needles to say the buds sound fantastic on that phone. Such a bad implementation of the most common codec is very shameful from Samsung and should be more widely acknowledged.

[oescalante]

Thank you for mentioning the bluetooth codec changer. That changed the codec from AAC to SBC automatically, and that's a huge improvement. Samsung, you have to fix that AAC like last year...we like good quality sound and we don't want to go to a different brand o purchase 3rd party app to improve a $1,000-$1,300 device quality sound. We hope that gets resolved.