I don't know if the phone is now simply passing the MP3 file over the bluetooth link or actually re-encoding on the fly, but I'm happy with the results. I'm not certain why something like this would be set to off by default. Perhaps it's a licensing issue?
The phone is passing the MP3 file over the bluetooth link. The (probable) reason that this behaviour is off by default, is that it doesn't degrade well if the available bandwidth goes down.
SBC isn't a very good codec, in the sense that at any given bitrate MP3 will sound better, but it has the very desirable property that it's easy to suddenly change the bitrate it uses in case of radio congestion or smog. So if, say, other bluetooth gadgets wander into range and the available bandwidth goes down, SBC will degrade smoothly and you'll just get worse-sounding audio until the congestion clears. If it's sending the MP3 directly, it can't (reasonably) re-encode the MP3 and so audio will drop out completely.
Peter
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