wynand32
New Head-Fier
While looked down on by many AAC is actually very good. Apple aren’t idiots and they know what is needed for bluetooth to sound good. If you were told what to listen for in the right parts of the right music you might pick up subtle differences between AAC and LDAC but even that isn’t a certainty. At a normal ‘enjoying the music’ listen especially when out and about when bluetooth is likely to be used I bet you couldn’t tell the difference if actually tested properly, that is blind ABX and volume matched accurately.
I was interested (vaguely) in connecting via LDAC as opposed to AAC from my iPhone as an experiment. I don't believe I'd be able to tell the difference. I'm glad to hear at least one opinion that AAC is pretty good. That's good to know.
I'm not at all convinced either way (yet) about lossless vs hi res vs whatever. I bought the Q15 because it provides enough power to comfortably drive my headphones and it adds an EQ where my iPhone has none. I like seeing it tell me it's playing an Apple Music 24-bit/192kHz track at 192kHz and a 16-bit/44kHz track at 44kHz (as opposed, to say, Amazon Music upsampling everything to 192kHz before sending it over), but I don't believe it makes a difference that I would notice. Maybe unless really critically listening, maybe not even then. And I wouldn't be able to do A/B testing because I don't have the same masters at different bitrates.
So, yeah. For whatever all that's worth.