Sonic Defender

Headphoneus Supremus
Pros: Excellent Bluetooth several Codecs, easy to use, very portable and light, price to performance, snappy connections and powering on
Cons: Volume wheel a little tight (but safety wise likely a good idea)
I would like to thank Bluewave for having kindly allowing me to review their Get wireless headphone amplifier. I was very pleased to discover this little gem after reading a review of it elsewhere on the Internet. I am also very pleased as this little gem is designed and made in Montreal which is just a few hours away from me and a city I frequently visit.

While I have no issues at all supporting companies that manufacture in Asia and elsewhere, it is nonetheless nice to support something local. The fact that it is a locally made product has nothing to do with my positive rating, that is just a bonus I find satisfying on a personal level.

I have not taken my own images so I will resort to using images taken from Bluewave themselves.

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Design, build quality and usability

I very much like the design. It is simple and clean looking and exactly what a device of this nature should look like in my opinion, unobtrusive. The build feels fine in hand, clearly it is not made to be treated roughly and dropped repeatedly onto concrete floors, but really, what is? I have full confidence that with normal handling and usage the Get will last. Everything feels tight and secure.

Usability I also find quite acceptable. I used the Get as it was intended, on the go taking public transit around the city. I used my Philips Fidelio M1 MKII with the Get as that is a wonderful sounding, and also truly portable headphone. I hope to review the M1 MKII soon if time permits, but I digress. The controls were well laid out, easy to use and I found that I didn't need to look, I just explored with my hand to see how natural the layout of controls was to use and I had no issues at all pausing, playing, moving to another track, everything just worked.

The one caveat I have echoes the experience of Currawong, the volume control I find is not the best to use with one hand adjusting as it can jump up quite quickly. On a few occasions the Get did suddenly get very loud on me. It is easy to avoid this from occurring, but the user should hold the get while adjusting the volume. This would not at all prevent me from really enjoying and buying the Get, but it is important to note.

I liked the clip and had no issues using it at all. I deliberately moved it around while travelling and felt that one handed it was quite easy to securely clip to pockets. I would also like to make an honourable mention to the little sound confirmations the Get provides when a connection is made, and when the Get is turned off. They are nice little user feedback cues and certainly a nice touch that tells me that Bluewave paid attention to detail. I like that in a company.

Bluetooth and USB
I used the Get almost exclusively via Bluetooth as that is by far and away my preferred connection option for a portable device and quickly becoming my go to even when at home. Yes, Bluetooth when done right can sound that good. The Get paired easily with my LG G6 which does have Apt x HD and the indicator light on the Get confirmed that indeed a Apt x HD connection had been made and this was confirmed by my G6 messaging. I had no issues with stability at all. I was able to move between rooms, leaving my phone streaming away with no penalty for doing so. When reconnecting with my phone the connection was very quick, perhaps the quickest of any Bluetooth device I have used. I like that.

The USB connection was likewise very easy to establish and I was able to go into JRiver Media Center 24 and set my output option to Bluewave Get (WASAPI).


Sound

When it comes to sound we are mostly describing the sound of the headphone used as frankly, unless the amp and DAC are poorly designed, or deliberately colour the audio output, they should mostly get out of the way. I found that M1 MKII used with the Get with Bluetooth between my G6 sounded just as I expected. I did not hear any evidence at all that the Fidelio was being under-powered. The sound of the Fidelio M1 MKII was not being altered in anyway that I could detect so that is great and what you want. The same thing happened when I used my Pioneer SE Monitor 5, it sounded like it should in terms of frequency response.

The takeaway is that if your headphone is reasonably easy to drive the Get should have no issue establishing solid control over the driver. As with any amplifier, the louder you go, the more complex the music and the more difficult a load to control the Get would be expected to lose control, but I suspect with a reasonable load (headphones designed to be efficient) this shouldn't be an issue. As I type I have the song Two Against Nature from Steely Dan playing at a pretty decent volume and I am hearing no issues.

I did not use the Get via USB nearly as much, but I personally think most users will use it via Bluetooth as that is it's forte. The connection with USB was very easy to make and sound quality wise I do feel that it gives up some clarity and dynamics as compared to Bluetooth. I say that based on limited time via USB so I do wish to qualify that statement. If the difference I believed I heard was indeed there, it really wasn't major at all. Again, the Get is first and foremost in my mind a Bluetooth device, but saying that it is a perfectly competent USB enabled device that should be expected to improve the audio performance of many onboard audio devices in entry and mid-level laptops. Yes, the Steely Dan sounds just great as I am coming to the end of my review. I just have to end while listening to Hotel California live as that is one of my core evaluation tracks. There we go, the Eagles are sounding darn fine right now, darn fine. The Get is getting the sound just right. Is it perfect? Of course not. Does it sound really good? Absolutely it does.


Conclusion and specifications

I think the Get is a great sounding device, certainly I enjoyed it and was very surprised by just how well it performed and I believe that it is a very worthwhile device in a quickly crowding space. The price point is perfectly acceptable, and frankly, if I was to consider that just a few years ago I would have to pay this price for a portable amplifier that didn't have Bluetooth, from that perspective the Get is a great deal. I have no reservation about recommending the Bluewave Get Wireless Headphone Amplifier to you. It is priced right, sounds great and is easy to use with an appropriate level of functionality so an easy recommendation. Thank you Bluewave for this wonderful little device and for allowing me to review it, I shall miss it when I ship it back to you!

The specifications are provided below:

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Pros: Excellent sound for the money. Light. Alternative, position-adjustable clips very handy. Quick power-on. Sound quality-indicating LED. Can be paired with multiple devices. AAC, APTx and APTxHD supported.
Cons: Output power limited. USB input limited to 48k. Volume control fiddly and lacks position indicator.


A couple of years ago I got a message from Bluewave asking if I’d like to try their Bluetooth receiver and headphone amp, and I agreed. It took them a couple of years, but now they have a final product, the Bluewave Get. While not the first device of its type on the market, it has a couple of useful features I haven’t seen on other devices.

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Starting with the design, it has an aluminium barrel on one end of which is the headphone socket and a removable clip on the other, with playback controls in the middle. It’s that clip that makes the Get unique, as it can be either rotated to sit on the other side, or removed and replaced with a special clip allowing it to attach to headphones. The rest of the body is plastic and contains an analog volume control and status light on the clip end, and a micro-USB socket on the other.

If you have a pair of headphones which have a single 3.5mm cable entry (my picture example is a pair of Noontec Zoro II) then with one of the included cables (right-angle to straight, or right-angle plugs on both ends) it can be easily attached. They also have a cable set for headsets that use a 2.5mm cable entry.

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The Bluewave Get supports APTxHD, which might seem like overkill given the price of the device itself, but it also supports AAC, making it compatible with iPhones and iPads. I found there was very little in it between the protocols, but with high-end IEMs I could make out slightly better clarity using an Astell&Kern AK380 as the Bluetooth source versus my iPhone X. With the latter, the AAC protocol made cymbals sound slightly less real.

In usage the Bluewave Get was easy to set up. The play/pause/call-answer button also doubles as the power and pairing button with a long, and longer press respectively. In pairing mode you get the requisite red/blue flash of the status LED. That LED also indicates when streaming is active. It will flash 3 times when streaming starts to show the quality, eg: Cyan for AAC; Amber for AptX HD and Magenta for AptX. It will also indicate the charging status when USB is plugged in using red for charging and green for charged. If the battery level becomes critically low, it will glow red as well.

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I tried the Bluewave Get with a variety of IEMs and headphones. In general it wasn’t every quite as warm or smooth sounding as the $400+ devices I have here, but even with the bright RE2000s, which can be difficult to drive well, I could get good sound out of it, without any unpleasant harshness.

With 135mW maximum output I didn’t expect a great deal with full-sized headphones. Indeed there wasn’t quite as much control over even fairly easy to drive headphones as with more expensive devices, but it was fine if you don’t need a lot of volume. I gather that there is a version with higher gain, but personally I’d stick to using it with IEMs for the most part.

Of IEMs, with Campfire Audio’s Andromedas, there was some degree of hiss, but Bluewave also has an impedance adaptor cable which takes care of this. In this case, less sensitive IEMs like Ultimate Ears' Reference Remastered made for a more straight-forward pairing.

The trickiest thing was adjusting the volume control. Likely to prevent accidental adjustment it is somewhat firm to move, making it easy to suddenly over-adjust from its minimum position. A couple of times I did just about blow my ears out when it adjusted suddenly as I applied pressure. I ended up resting my finger on the side and using a finger nail to gently adjust the volume.

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It came into its own as a means to add Bluetooth to my car stereo, where its quick power on, auto-off and small size made it convenient to use.

Overall the Bluewave Get is a versatile Bluetooth headphone adaptor with good sound and unique features. With a warmer-sounding pair of low-to-mid-range IEMs it would make a good, simple wireless kit to use with a smart phone.

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seaice
seaice
Thanks for the great review! I bought the Bluewave GET some time ago and I can confirm from my own experience that it is quite usable with the following headphones:

AKG K701
Sennheiser HD800
Shure SE846 (via iFi iEMatch adapter / I do not have the Bluewave impedance adaptor cable)
Hifiman Susvara

Source: Mobile LG v20 aptXhd Bluetooth
Dixter
Dixter
It seemed to be a good product when they first announced it... they never actually finished the product feature set... never did build and release the Apple/Android App.... there is a better product for the same price range.. try the https://www.ear-studio.com/ and I think you will find it a better product...
FullCircle
FullCircle
If there is anyone wanting a short spc tensile 2 prong cable to join with this product, we have extra in stock

PM if interested
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