[KUNFUCHOPSTICKS]

these are wireless, includes Bose Active Noice REDUCTION, etc etc.

But what caught my eye is that they have dual Knowles balanced armature drivers. My jaws kind of dropped seeing this. And all this for 130...

Anyone else thought the same? I mean historically anything with more than one balanced armature driver will be 200+ at least and that’s for wired IEMs. I think amazon is subsidizing to get Alexa into our ears or we’ve been totally taken for a ride all these years on balanced armature iems.

 

[Peddler]

I've just looked up the specifications for the chipset they use:-

• Programmable audio processing engine
• Fast (up to 768kHz) and slow processing paths
• Bi-quad filters, limiters, volume controls, and mixing
• Low latency, 24-bit ADCs and DACs
• 102 dB SNR (through PGA and ADC with A weighted filter)
• 108 dB combined SNR (through DAC and headphone with A weighted filter)
• Serial port sampling rate from 8 to 192kHz
• 5us analog-to-analog latency
• 4 single-ended analog inputs, configurable as microphone or line inputs
• Dual stereo digital microphone inputs
• Stereo analog audio output, single-ended or differential,
• configurable as either line output or headphone driver
• PLL supporting any input clock rate from 8 to 27MHz
• Full duplex, asynchronous sample rate converters (ASRCs)
• Analog and digital input/output of 1.8 to 3.3V
• Digital signal processing (DSP) core of 1.1 to 1.8V
• I2C and SPI control interfaces, self-boot from I2C EEPROM
• 7 Multipurpose (MPx) pins for digital controls and outputs
• Applications:
• Noise canceling handsets, headsets, and headphones
• Bluetooth® active noise cancelling (ANC) handsets, headsets, and headphones
• Personal navigation devices

Interesting specs regarding signal to noise ratio and latency but the serial port sampling rate seems a bit low - don't really know what I'm talking about regarding this stuff though so it could also be utterly brilliant. They certainly do look interesting though - I wonder if they're capable of APTX?

 

[tdel]

Got my Echo Buds. I'm not an Alexa user - so that doesn't really appeal to me (I use Google Assistant). Opening the box, I wasn't feeling great. The silicone sleeves felt dumb and unnecessary and they were difficult to put on. Pairing with the Alexa app took longer than it should have and I'm still a bit concerned that it is a battery drain.

Once I got the right sleeves installed with the nubs in the right spot and I got used to putting them in snugly...pretty happy with them. The bluetooth signal is stronger than most other pairs I've tried. Bluetooth calls seem better than any pair I've used before. Every other pair I've tried (except for "wired" bluetooth) has been awful for call quality.

With the right sleeves, they fit really well and are very comfortable With the sleeves they do not slip out at all. I tend to like balanced armature sound (I loved Shure SE315s for a long time) Sound quality is very good. THe active noise reduction works very well. There's no noticeable hiss. Wearing them on the train this morning I tried switching between AND and "OFF" and the normal train sounds all but vanished. I could hear a faint train horn with ANR on, but the difference with it off was night and day. Passthrough mode works, but I'm never going to use it. I don't really understand it. If I want to listen to headphones I don't want to hear the outside noise. If I need to listen to something outside, I'm taking the headphones out.

I wish they supported aptX (or even better, aptX HD). I wish the sleeves were unnecessary and the silicone coating was on the earbuds directly. But just as headphones, I like them a lot. They sound great. If I was a user of Alexa, I'd probably like them even more.

I had Liberty+ which were never very good and very disappointing. I've had multiple generic true wireless pairs, some better than others. I also had ADV Model 3s (https://www.adv-sound.com/products/model-3) which were probably the best sounds bluetooth headphones I had to this point - but they are far from "truly wireless".

One a OnePlus 5 with V4A installed.